Jousting for the New Generation: Challenges to Contemporary Schooling

with contributions from Amanda McGraw and Mary Mason ACER PRESS 050702•Jousting for the New Gene1 1 25/6/07 17:16:01...

Author: David Loader

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with contributions from Amanda McGraw and Mary Mason

ACER PRESS

050702•Jousting for the New Gene1 1

25/6/07 17:16:01

I have not written for the crowd … I hand down my work to the thinking individuals … They will feel as I felt, or as a shipwrecked sailor feels on a desert island for whom the trace of a former fellow sufferer affords more consolation than do all the cockatoos and apes in the trees. (Arthur Schopenhauer, Manuscript Remains, vol. 4, p. 207/ ‘Pandectae II’, section 84, cited in Yalom 2005, p. 237)

To my wife Jennifer and to the new generation, my grandchildren, Finn, Jess and Nick. First published 2007 by ACER Press, an imprint of Australian Council for Educational Research Ltd 19 Prospect Hill Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124 www.acerpress.com.au [email protected] Text © 2007 David Loader Design and typography © 2007 ACER Press This book is copyright. All rights reserved. Except under the conditions described in the Copyright Act 1968 of Australia and subsequent amendments, and any exceptions permitted under the current statutory licence scheme administered by Copyright Agency Limited (www.copyright.com.au), no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, broadcast or communicated in any form or by any means, optical, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher. Edited by Amanda Pinches Cover design by Italic Studio Typeset by Desktop Concepts P/L, Melbourne Printed in Australia by BPA Print Group National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data: Loader, David. Jousting for the new generation: challenges to contemporary schooling. Bibliography. ISBN 9780864317346. 1. Education – Australia – Philosophy. 2. Education – Social aspects – Australia. 3. Education – Aims and objectives – Australia. 4. Educational change – Australia. I. McGraw, Amanda. II. Mason, Mary. III. Title. 370.10994


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Foreword

I am often asked to recommend books that aspiring school principals should read and I always include David Loader’s first book The inner principal (1997). While the description has become a cliché among book reviewers, I’ve always considered it to be essential reading. I wrote the foreword to that book and I count it an honour to do the same exactly a decade later for Jousting for the new generation: Challenges to contemporary schooling. Henceforth, I will have no hesitation to make the same recommendation as I did for David’s first book, but this time I make it for a larger audience—not just for those in or preparing for leadership in schools. This book is essential reading for all who have a stake in learning and the future of schools, not only in Australia—its themes will resonate in many countries—and not only for those who are directly engaged in schooling. It should be read by every policymaker before they make policy about schools. It should be read by leaders in business and industry, indeed, by leaders throughout the wider community, many of whom do not yet understand the imperative for change in education. What is it about David Loader that warrants this attention? In many respects the reasons were set out in my foreword to The inner principal. He wrote that book in the final months of his time at Methodist Ladies’ College, Melbourne, where he had been principal for 18 years. He had led an educational revolution with the introduction of laptops for students at every level. It was not just the introduction of a new technology. Virtually every aspect of the school changed, including how students learnt, the role of teachers, the design of buildings, the shape of rooms and the style of furniture. By the mid 1980s, he had grasped the significance of the revolution a decade or more ahead of most of his counterparts in the public and private sectors. He had a deep understanding of how the lives of young people were changing. David had earned his reputation as one of the leading strategic thinkers in education. iii


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Jousting for the new generation is of the same genre but the stage, or rather the field, of the joust is much bigger. The inner principal was launched soon after David became principal of Wesley College, the largest independent school in Australia, with more than 3000 students distributed over several campuses. It was co-educational. What a change from the single campus Methodist Ladies’ College in another suburb of Melbourne! There was no doubt that the wider community, as well as those in schools, were expecting something special from such a high-profile principal. Among many achievements, one stands out. Wesley College decided to establish a campus in a regional location away from Melbourne. Unlike Marshmead, established in a bush setting under David’s leadership at Methodist Ladies’ College, it was decided to embed the campus in a community. Several Victorian towns were invited to work with Wesley College in developing their proposals. The historic gold-mining town of Clunes was selected and the benefits flowed both ways, as the school drew on the resources of the community, which also benefited because it gained a new source of energy and income. It is a superb example of how to utilise and strengthen social capital. There were scores of debates on critical issues in education, not only at Wesley College, but also in the wider community, during David’s appointment as principal. Many ‘jousts’ are described in these pages, with his collaborators Mary Mason and Amanda McGraw making significant contributions. Jousting for the new generation was written several years after David retired from Wesley College. Many of his colleagues would be content to call it a day after three decades in the principalship, but not David Loader. He has since filled a kaleidoscope of roles, including Inter national Scholar at the National College for School Leadership in England, Associate Professor at The University of Melbourne, regular contributor to the award-winning professional journal Teacher, presenter in seminars and conferences, and coach and mentor for school principals. He draws on all of these experiences in Jousting for the new generation. I mentioned at the outset that this should be essential reading for key stakeholders. In this I include teacher educators, teachers and those preparing to be teachers. David draws on an array of authors who over decades, or centuries in some instances, have shaped education and especially schools. One can readily imagine the jousting that will occur in seminars and tutor ials, but also in professional development programs, stimulated by what is written here. Jousting for the new generation also has special significance for leaders and is not the only book to be published this year that pays tribute to David Loader’s achievements. Methodist Ladies’ College has updated its history this year, after the centenary edition that was published in 1982. Twenty-five years have been added in a book entitled involving learning. It


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Foreword

describes the contributions of David and his successor Rosa Storelli. It is fortunate that leading independent schools pay attention to their history in this manner. There should be more in state or public education. Jousting for the new generation cannot replace such scholarship, but one of its special strengths is that it is not bound by distinctions between public and private schools. Its influence is almost certain to be universal. The Stumble Principal is a special gem in David’s first book: By stumbling I mean that as I venture forth into the unknown, I chance upon something unexpected, maybe even fall over it. But it does not end there. Having fallen, I don’t lie passive or angry, but get up and reflect on this fall. If in this reflection, a glimpse of a new possibility results, then follows decisive action which capitalises on this stumble. The process is repeated by venturing out again, stumbling, reflecting, glimpsing and then taking considered action. (Loader 1997)

The counterpart in this book may well be the final part The Knight’s Tale, where David has chosen to ‘come clean on some of the formative experiences in my life’. It is a reassuring tale as much as it is an inspiring one, because it shows how the heights in leadership and transformation in learning can be attained despite, and indeed because of, the stumbles along the way. I had a strong personal identification on reading this chapter. I happened to be reading Morris West’s autobiography A view from the ridge when I reached this part of the book, and it is a passage from this book that David chose to start the chapter. I invite the reader to reflect on the same passage with its opening statement. When I look back, I see a long, gradual slope, with all its features plain: the dark forests, the green pastures, the rocky outcrops, the flashing streams, the swamps, the dangerous defiles, the post-houses, the places of ambush. (West 1996, p. 1)

But I offer the reader one piece of advice at this point: leave the last part until last! In his introduction to The inner principal, David referred to the counsel of his friends on the matter of transparency. ‘It could do you profess ional harm because it is so personal’; ‘You may limit your future options by setting down the sort of person you now see yourself to be’; ‘Why wear your heart on your sleeve’; ‘People will be able to take advantage of you because you have revealed so much of yourself’. He declined such advice, but observed that ‘I will have to wait and see if these are the outcomes’. His subsequent appointments and recent work indicates that these warnings were


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unfounded. He has become an even more influential leader in education. I have no doubt that the same will follow the publication of Jousting for the new generation. Like its predecessor, the messages about education are profound. Schools and the nature of learning are changing in dramatic ways and what they will be like in the future will differ from what prevails at present in significant ways. Using the language of the joust, he throws down the gauntlet in the Introduction and declares his vision of what will emerge. If schools are to continue, they must change. What will need to be unique about schools in the future will be that instead of being built around classes of students, they will be built around individual students. Instead of reflecting the values and technologies of a past generation, they will incorporate new generational values and technology. Instead of schools being first and foremost a place, they will be first and foremost a community. This new generational school will exist when two or three come together for the purpose of learning, whether physically present or virtually joined through technology.

At the heart of the vision is a commitment to securing success for all students in every setting – a powerful commitment to quality and equity that should shape policy and practice everywhere. Let’s pick up the gauntlet!

Professor Brian J. Caldwell Managing Director, Educational Transformations Professorial Fellow, The University of Melbourne


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Contents

Foreword iii Preface x Acknowledgements xv INTrodUCTIoN Part 1

PUrPoSeFUL JoUSTING

1

NeW GeNerATIoN Le ArNING The class that matters Learning communities

19

electronic community

21

Learning styles

12

17

22

Young people as powerful learners: Amanda McGraw More wow, less yuk

24

27

Intellectual character

30

Welcome back, Socrates

32

disciplines are important: Mary Mason Habit and thinking: Mary Mason

34

37

educational fashion or contemporary imperatives Student-initiated learning

42

Farewell to knowledge schooling?

44

Personal computing: A dream being realised Jekyll and Hyde updated

40

46

48

Just a moment, have we really got these practices right? Part 2

SCHooLS: A STrUCTUrAL PerSPeCTIve Alternative structures

52

54

Schools have resisted change Beyond silos

50

60

62

vii


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Contents

Thinking outside Australia 63 Quantum schooling 66 School obesity 69 Notschool.net 71 Experiment 73 Dare we allow schools to be different? 75 Curriculum and school makeovers: Mary Mason 77 Family schooling 81 From public/private to community schools 82 A civic structure 86

Part 3 Schools : A cultural perspective 89 Trust me, I am a teacher 91 New teachers, new teaching: Amanda McGraw 93 Hands up, please! 95 A sharing culture 97 An open culture 99 Managing ourselves 101 Punishment or reform? 103 A values-based culture 106 A research culture 107 From isolation to inclusiveness 109 Locked in 111 Polity and schools 112

Part 4 Le adership and the Le ader 115 On the brink: Amanda McGraw 118 Principal isolation 122 Principals as change agents 126 Transitional leadership 128 We need principals in schools 130 Principal dreams 132 Stumbling forward 135 Principal: Powerful or powerless? 137 Risky business 139 Being mistaken for God 140 Being human: A leader’s weakness or strength? 142 Followership 144


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Contents

ix

Part 5 The Knight’s Tale 147 The territory 148 A territory map 149 Chaos 150 Dissonance 151 Dreamer with a trowel 156 Vulnerability 158 Connection and community 160 Continuity 163 Coherence 166 And you? 167

References 168


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Preface

‘Politics’, or more specifically, the notion of the ‘polity’ … is a more fundamental realm than either ‘society’ or the ‘economy’ because, as Plato pointed out in the republic ‘humans are political animals’. By this he means that because we live in groups (polities) disagreements arise as to the authoritative allocation of values and, since we can’t have all we want all the time, it is these large and small predicaments that can be resolved, if violence is to be minimised, only by the process we call ‘politics’. (Costar 2006, pp. 1–2)

I want schools to change significantly and the only way for that to happen is for you to speak out on behalf of the new generation of students in our schools. So when invited to write another book, I saw this as an opportunity to stir passion, idealism and authenticity in all who might be able to influence what happens in schools. I want changes in the values espoused in schooling, the allocation of scarce resources, the nature of learning, the inequality of outcomes, school structures, school culture and I want to encourage leadership and risk taking. Without emotional involvement and personal commitment from you, change will not come and change we urgently need in our school system. Our community thinking about schools is too bland and regressive. We are ‘not so much anticipating the future as nostalgic for it’ (Banville 2005, p. 96). The future for many is no more than an imagined glorious past. x


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xi

Views of school tend to be binary when there are many possibilities. The arguments tend to be about the peripherals, the ‘small predicaments’, not about the larger picture, the ‘large predicaments’, and when there is debate there is little evidence of a self-critical analysis. We need some bold new init iatives together with a community to support them. We have a new generation of students, with new digital skills and a different mind set, and yet the measures of school effectiveness are more applicable to an earlier generation of students. We have not addressed significant inequality in outcomes from schooling. We have new needs from our knowledge society yet our curriculum is from an industrial society. And still we sit passively on our hands! So I wanted to write a morning book, one that might fire the reader into action for the day and generate spirited discussion. I wanted to challenge our community into some serious debate about our present and our future. Such a book needs content as well as passion, so I needed to provide information and argument about a range of contemporary issues such as school culture, futures thinking, curriculum, pedagogy, school structures and leadership; if it is to come, change will need to be delivered on multiple fronts. But how was I to write this? It is one thing to be passionate and idealistic; it is another thing to be realistic. I needed to find an appropriate voice and structure in which to deliver my challenges. The attraction for readers to my first book, The inner principal (1997), has been attributed to the honesty with which I described something of the inner thoughts and feelings of a principal in role. (When will the film be made?) The inner principal explores leadership by looking at the inner person, considering the personal qualities of a school leader, their vision, beliefs, feelings and ways of acting and thinking. My goal this time was different. I was not writing to support principals in their important work, but rather seeking to challenge those in schools and members of the broader society and government on the relevance of today’s schooling within a knowledge-based society for a very different generation of students. Today’s students have not just changed incrementally from those of the past, nor simply changed their slang, clothes, body adornments, or styles, as has happened between generations previously. A really big discontinuity has taken place … Today’s students … have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers, videogames, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other tools and toys of the digital age. (Prensky 2001, p. 1)

My perspective in writing this time was also different. No longer a school principal, I have written as a school visitor, a mentor to principals and


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a consultant to schools, school systems and businesses. With more objectivity than was possible when I was a school principal, I can now address a range of contemporary issues in education, encouraging a critical dialogue at a time when there is a prevailing culture of accepting of the governing view. No longer within one school, I have had the time to travel, research and participate in educational systems in the UK, USA, Singapore and Hong Kong. From overseas, the Australian scene does look different and this broader experience and additional time to reflect have fuelled my writing. I was committed to continuing to be personal, challenging and informal in my writing. Learning is not some technical task like computer programming; it is integral to the person. It is part of the spirit, the soul and the heart of a person. We need case studies, but we also need to be encouraged to explore what is inside us—what we feel, what we think, where we have come from, as well as where we wish to go. So, I have written unashamedly in a personal and passionate way. I have sought to identify the experiences that have helped shape my views, and what drives me to maintain the fight and challenge people and ideas in this resource-advantaged but remarkably silent lucky country. Rather than a seamless, lengthy argument for change in schools, I have decided to contribute a series of short essays that can be read individually or together. Given that the focus of each was a challenge, I have called these essays ‘jousts’. I was imagining verbal repartee, argument and counterargument. So I was not unhappy with the imagery of knights on white horses riding out on behalf of worthy causes. The content of these essays, my jousts, has emerged from my interaction with schools, the community and politicians in and beyond Australia. Taken together, the jousts are a record of a number of important personal and professional dialogues. Many of these have been previously published as articles in Teacher magazine and Incorporated Association of Registered Teachers of Victoria (IARTV) (now known as the Centre for Strategic Education) publications, although for this book I have made significant changes, updating and rewriting them to achieve more coherence. Since my goal in writing this book was to deliver a better educational experience for a new generation of students, and given that the style was to be a series of intellectual and social jousts, I decided to call it Jousting for the new generation: Challenges to contemporary schooling. In writing this book, as in my professional life, I have worked best when supported by like-minded professionals. I asked colleagues to critique my early drafts of this book and appreciated their honest feedback. Mary Mason and Amanda McGraw were asked to contribute jousts to this book so I could draw on what is currently being undertaken in research and practice in schools and universities.


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Mary Mason started her working life as a nurse where she trained at St George’s Hospital, Hyde Park Corner, London. She became a clinical teacher at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, before moving to Africa with her husband for two years. There she worked to start a nursing school in Lesotho and, at the same time, learnt a lot about how culture and resources create the framework in which people live. In 1974 Mary came to Australia where she worked as a nurse and continued her education at Monash University in English and the classics. She began a new career as an English teacher and was quickly recognised as a creative and innovative school leader, as well as an inspiring teacher. She has been Head of English and Director of Professional Development, Learning and Research at Methodist Ladies’ College, Melbourne, where she also started a Learning Network and developed research initiatives with teachers. Mary moved to Wesley College, Melbourne, where she was Associate Principal and worked with Amanda McGraw and Ros Hardy exploring how students learn and how teachers align their practice to help student thinking and learning. She is presently leading teaching and learning at The Geelong College. She was Vice President of the Victorian Association for the Teaching of English and Victorian representative on the national English body. She has also been involved in the management of Victorian Certificate of Education and is on the exam-setting panel for literature. She is the author of many books on English education and has written for journals and newspapers on learning and thinking. Amanda McGraw is Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at University of Ballarat, where she coordinates the Graduate Diploma of Education (Secondary). In this role, Amanda continues to develop innovative ways to prepare new teachers for changing work in schools. Prior to this, she worked for 15 years as a teacher of English in state and independent schools. Amanda has held a number of leadership positions, including coordinating English departments. She has worked for the Department of Employment, Education and Training designing a literacy and learning professional development program for teachers. She managed the English Key Learning Area for the then Victorian Board of Studies. Amanda was also Education/Executive Officer for the Victorian Association for the Teaching of English for three years. She became more interested in learning and teaching processes and conducting research when she began work at Wesley College, Melbourne, as a Learning Specialist. She then moved to a unique partnership role created by a regional university and a large multi-campus secondary college. Amanda worked for four years in this role as an Assistant Principal with a focus on enhancing teaching and learning in the school, and as a lecturer working with secondary student teachers. This role also involved working to build partnership initiatives between the school and the university.


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Jousting for the new generation is written to encourage readers to take time-out to read, listen and observe, and then to dare to speak out, to joust, for a better future for our young people and the community. Not only do we want to support new generational learning, we also want to build a community that is self-critical, forward looking and action orientated. It is only through questioning cultural assumptions and taking personal authority for your thinking and practice that a better future can be achieved, both personally and for society. The future is in our hands and we need to actively shape that future.


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Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the help of many people while writing this book. From friends and colleagues I have received encouragement and critical comment. In particular, I mention Robert Renton, Kathy Boburka, Pam Dettman, Tony McKay, Elisabeth Lenders, Mary Mason, Steve Holden, Ralph Saubern, Stephen Lee, Melinda Scash and Mark Savage. To ACER, and in particular Ralph Saubern, Andrew Watson and Amanda Pinches, I express my appreciation for the confidence shown in me by asking that I write this book. In the difficult early days of the book, when I was looking for the appropriate voice and structure, Ralph was a great help. In the final editing, I am appreciative of the work of Amanda. To Steve Holden, I am indebted for his insight, debate and alternative wording for some of my ideas. Steve has been a wonderful colleague and I have learnt a lot from him. I thank Mary Mason and Amanda McGraw for their contributed jousts to this book. They bring fresh insights from within schools today. I have worked with both Mary and Amanda in schools and it was wonderful to have them contribute to this book. They, too, have a passion for reform and continue to work for a better future for all students. I offer a very special thanks to my wife Jennifer Ferneyhough who has worked extensively and tirelessly with me in the editing of this book. Jennifer encouraged me when I got bogged down in the details and when I despaired of ever completing the task. Jennifer, in another life, was a trained teacher and is currently employed in the field of adult education in an international setting. I am indebted to Brian Caldwell for his support and enthusiasm for my work. Despite a busy international role in education, Brian supports and cares for many of us in Australia. I was delighted when he agreed to write the Foreword to this book. xv


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Finally, I thank you, the readers, for being sufficiently concerned about the future of schooling that you have bothered to read this book. May the jousts lead you to action and may we together help provide better learning opportunities for our new generation of students.

David Loader


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Introduction Purposeful jousting

Social hope begins with men and women questioning cultural assumptions and taking authority for interpreting them, no matter where the search for truth leads. (Lawrence 1979, p. 248)

throwing down the gauntlet Jousting conjures up images of knights on horseback charging forth into battle on behalf of someone else or for some worthy cause. And so it is that this book takes up the cause of the new generation of students by throwing down the gauntlet, entering the lists and coming to close quarters with those who would defend the unacceptable present situation in our schools. In this book we will ‘refus[e] to allow cultural assumptions to remain untested and … disentangl[e] the cobweb of myths and mysteries of our social institutions’ (Lawrence 1979, p. 235). A physical joust occurs between two mounted knights with lances. While a modified form of jousting continues today in communities that try to replicate the medieval period, what is more pervasive and lasting is the metaphorical imagery in our language. So we have politicians jousting with words and ideas in public, although some of us might wish that their jousts involved real lances with lives threatened if they did not perform! We have community members giving battle, raising their colours to show their allegiance, crossing swords, tilting and becoming unhorsed when the argument has failed, and we have honours of respect being bestowed on people by calling them knights. 1


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Jousting for the New Generation

It was in the fifteenth century that knights and jousting were common in Europe. From history and myth we have the images of knights on powerful horses, brandishing a lance or sword, jousting in colourfully decorated areas or on the open road. To become a knight, there was a period of physical, artistic, religious and moral training. The knight had to be highly skilled in horsemanship and fighting, seen to be brave and loyal, and able to discern his duty. Before being proclaimed as a knight, he had to make a commitment to protect the weak, to right wrongs and to honour women. Chaucer described the ideal knight as follows: Though so illustrious, he was very wise; And bore himself as meekly as a maid. He never yet had any vileness said; In all his life, to whatsoever wight. He was a truly perfect, gentle knight. (Chaucer 1342–1400)

However, changes in military technology—the longbow, the crossbow and then guns and cannons—meant that knights on horseback could no longer be effective and the practice of jousting lost its military significance. Knighthood continued but only as a title of honour for persons who served the king, queen or country. Jousting continued in a metaphorical sense, with people committed to fighting injustice, speaking out in support of those without voice in the community and arguing for deeper human values among individuals and in society. Metaphorical jousting continues in this book, where ideas and values are being contested. While I make no claims to be a knight in shining armour, I do see myself committed to protecting the vulnerable (our students and society), to fighting injustice (the outcomes of schooling) and to honouring humanity by seeking humanistic values. I would welcome the support of fellow knights who share my passion. Alone we may achieve little, but together we can be a force.

The jousts Specifically the jousts in the following parts are written to confront and challenge inappropriate thinking and practices. Some of these are: n Addressing

the inequality that we find in outcomes from schooling

Vast inequality exists within schools, between schools, and between school systems in the world. Such inequality is morally unacceptable and practically detrimental to the common good of all human beings. (iNet 2006)


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Introduction: Purposeful jousting

n Confronting

government and their instrumentalities that are imposing unhelpful structures and inappropriate measurements on the learning process n Reconceptualising schooling so that it breaks free of the materialistic ethic and is no longer driven by commerce, which is the basis of much of what we do today n Relating effectively to the external social geography—the students’ homes and their community. Students and families need to have more control over the curriculum and the learning process n Recognising that our students have changed radically; today’s students aren’t the students that our schooling system was designed to teach n Responding to the changed societal needs of a knowledge society n Acknowledging that institutions such as schools, which have served us well in the past, may have outlived their shelf life. Today we have import ant and effective social network hubs that can deliver both education and community and they can do this cost effectively n Challenging teachers to become primarily learners and not knowers, extending their knowledge and sharing with their students in the learning adventure n Calling for daring leaders who will look forward and build for a different tomorrow. If schools are to continue, they must change. What will need to be unique about schools in the future is that instead of being built around classes of students, they will be built around individual students. Instead of reflecting the values and technologies of a past generation, they will incorporate new generational values and technology. Instead of schools being first and foremost a place, they will be first and foremost a community. This new generational school will exist when two or three come together for the purpose of learning, whether physically present or virtually joined through technology.

Speaking personally For me, life has always been a search for meaning, identity and role within, and at odds with, a conformist culture. That search was there as an unfulfil led and lost student, as a frustrated, idealistic teacher and as an entrepreneurial school principal. It was there in my public role and in my personal life. It is also with me in my senior years as I reflect on the past, try to make sense of the present and plan for the future. Do I ignore this troublesome inner voice of disquiet or do I speak out against perceived wrongs? I know which is easier, but for some reason I am unable to be passive in the face of injustice. I am drawn to metaphorical jousting with the goal of achieving a


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victory for those less fortunate members of our society. I want to help build a tomorrow that is more compatible with my understanding of the human spirit and a sustainable future. It has been painful to be different. But over the years I have learnt that while I may be odd, the world is in no less peculiar. If you believe, as I do, that every child should have a positive learning experience in our schools, then you will be disappointed that too many students in our schools today get a shabby deal. As a taxpayer you can feel aggrieved that our society, considering the amount of money it outlays on schools, is short changed. Our goal should be nothing short of that which has been enunciated in the UK government’s green paper, Every child matters (HM Treasury 2003), which asserts that every child should have the chance to fulfil her or his potential. This is to be achieved by ‘reducing levels of educational and social failure, and by promoting good health and positive community values including respect for self and others among children and young people’ (HM Treasury 2003).

Reasons for concern A strong vote of no-confidence was given to Australian schools by Emeritus professor of physics at Sydney University, Harry Messel, when he wrote emotionally in the Sydney Morning Herald (2006): Australia must seriously question whether it should continue to spend a couple of thousand million dollars a year on a school system which appears to be turning out an ever increasing number of undisciplined, irresponsible, greedy, often near-illiterate, lawless individuals who don’t give a tinker’s curse for the country, their mates or anyone else.

Bill Gates, Microsoft founder, is also publicly critical of today’s schools: By obsolete, I mean that our high schools—even when they’re working exactly as designed—cannot teach our kids what they need to know today. Training the workforce of tomorrow with the high schools of today is like trying to teach kids about today’s computers on a 50-year-old mainframe. It’s the wrong tool for the times. (2005)

A recent study of OECD countries, Unique creation (Miller & Bentley 2003), acknowledges that schools have enabled society to evolve and progress to its present industrial and intellectual point by: • freeing parents of their family responsibilities; parents could go to work knowing that their children were safe in school


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• contributing to the development of workers and community by assisting young people in their cognitive development and in their socialisation • assisting employers with the screening and sorting of potential employees. But some students have benefited more than others from today’s schools. It is not acceptable that schools might contribute to a worsening social situation by supporting one group over another or one student over another. The ‘gaps between high and low performing students in Australia is unacceptably large’ (Education Foundation Australia 2006, p. 5). Nobel Laureate James Heckman (2006) argues that: If we don’t provide disadvantaged young children with the proper environments to foster cognitive and non-cognitive skills, we’ll create a class of young people without such skills, without motivation, without the ability to contribute to the larger society.

We need a delivery system for education that reaches all students and offers each student hope and a pathway forward. This is not happening today and will not happen unless there are significant changes to how schools are structured and how knowledge and skills are delivered. Despite the caring of good teachers, today’s schools build curriculum and timetables around classes not individuals, and they focus on educational outcomes— what can be measured—not on the intangibles that might deliver personal growth and opportunity. Not enough students reach Year 12, but for those who do there is a disturbing trend. A study by Swinburne University (Melbourne) researchers reported that nearly one in five Victorian Year 12 students had considered suicide or self-harm due to the pressure of school work (Gough & Edwards 2006). This is an extraordinary statistic! Even if it was one in 500, this number still would be too high. Psychologist Dr Michael Carr-Gregg’s view is that The exam system is ... ludicrous as it tests young people who are all developing at different times at the same time and assesses them against each other to within two decimal points. (Gough & Edwards 2006)

In NSW in 2005, there were 11 200 long suspensions and 356 students expelled from public schools. I would estimate that a similar number were removed from independent schools. The NSW Education Minister said of the statistics (McDougall 2006), ‘these procedures boosted the authority of principals to take action to ensure staff and student safety. They send a strong message to students that repeated misbehaviour will not be tolerated.’ While supporting principals is critical, isn’t it better to address the cause of the problem, rather than seek out the aberrant students? In that


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way we rid ourselves of the source of discontent. Schools should be places that students want to attend to find community, learning and hope. Let us make nothing less than this our mission. Research into middle years schooling in Australia, as we will read in Educational fashion or contemporary imperatives (p. 40), found too many students felt alienated from their school experience. Many students did not want to come to school most days. Many did not find their work in class interesting, and a clear pattern of under achievement and disengagement was discerned. And these are results from the good schools; schools that the community rates as good because they have high-quality academic results or because parents pay expensive fees for their children to attend. Research for Unique creation (Miller & Bentley 2003) found that the present functioning of schools presents barriers to the achievement of the goal: ‘every child to achieve their potential’. Three features were selected out for criticism: n If

the student outcomes that we seek are to deliver personal autonomy and the skill of adapting to unpredictability, then the classroom-based approach to schooling is of limited value The current approaches to specifying curriculum content and teaching it through fixed routines to standard-sized groups of students, places clear limits on the scope for developing the skills of learning. (p. 45)

If we are to tailor ‘learning pathways to the attributes and aspirations of the individual learner’ (p. 45), then major changes in the organisation of schools need to follow n Schools are not doing enough ‘to socialise the young towards citizenship, social and emotional health, ecological sustainability and more’ (p. 45) n Present credentialling is not providing accurate information on a person’s or team’s capacities. If we limit discussion about schooling just to the academic performance of our students, and I hope we never do, we can still find significant criticisms of their general success. In a key UK report, the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) (2003) was critical of the poor performance of students against established benchmarks. The measurement that DfES used was the performance of students in the General Certificate of School Edu cation (GCSE). Specifically, they measured the number of students who achieved the higher grades in the range A+–C: ‘over 50 schools were found to have less than 15%’ and ‘more than 200 schools where the outcome is 15%–25% and over 800 schools achieving 25%–40%’ (p. 9). In addition, DfES found that there existed up to ‘four times as much variation in pupil


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attainment within schools as there was between schools’ (p. 9). The groups that were not succeeding at schools included boys who were not matching the girls’ performances, children from poorer backgrounds, children from some ethnic minority backgrounds, and children in care. In other words, some students were benefiting from today’s schools, but minority and disadvantaged individuals, groups and schools were not having success. Surely schools exist to build up, and not disadvantage, the lives of all young people. The school experience of too many students is not only a wasted opportunity; it often turns them away from learning to learn and limits their future as individuals and as contributing community members. For some, it fuels their discontent and later in life they may return to seek retribution against a society that they consider to be unfair. All students should enjoy school and benefit from learning in ways other than simply getting a piece of paper at its conclusion. Their desire to learn, and all students have this, needs to be nurtured. To achieve improvement we need a reform agenda for schools and this will only be achieved if the community demands this. By giving voice to my concerns and aspirations through this book, I hope that it will lead to others finding their voice and also speaking out. It is time for us to revisit the wonderful insightful writings of the 1970s, of authors like John Holt (How children learn and How children fail) and Ivan Illich (Deschooling society). Holt (1971) describes how children use their mind badly in schools. He argues that schools for children are places where they make you go and where they tell you to do things and where they try to make your life unpleasant if you don’t do them or don’t do them right. (p. 47)

Schools have improved greatly since Holt was writing, but the basic thrust of what he wrote continues to be relevant. Many students still do not go willingly to school and when they do attend school they do so to become a certified product, a graduate of specified quality. Illich wanted us to love people, not products. He argued for a more positive view of the learner—one who is self-motivated, who does not need to be bribed or compelled to learn. He believed that society needs to be investing in new links to the world for the learner and not funnelling all educational programs through a teacher or school. The current search for new educational funnels must be reversed into the search for their institutional inverse; educational webs which heighten the opportunity for each one to transform each moment of his (her) living into one of learning, sharing and caring. (Illich 1973, p. 8)


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And when Illich wrote this so long ago, he knew nothing about the current opportunities for individuals to learn using the World Wide Web and electronic communication!

Challenging times Today we live in a networked community and the future of schooling is inextricably linked to this. In the past, we were forced to depend on local communities, isolated classrooms and limiting blackboards of information. Today we can enjoy a larger and more interactive global community brought to us by electrons, networks and computers. We still need learning to be mediated by people, whether as teachers, mentors or peers. But these human learning mediators may come to the student or the students may go to them, physically or virtually, individually or in groups. There is no single form of school organisation that will work for all. David Hargreaves (2003) argues for creating a climate that will encourage radical structural reform to reshape the school system around diversity and choice. My view of the future is that schools, as we know them, will be broken into parts and dispersed throughout the community. These may or may not be called schools, but they will be places of learning. Unlike now, they will not be embedded in one place, fenced off from the community, with expensive, outdated infrastructure that may hold back the learning of young people. It is unfortunate that the debate about the nature and quality of schools, leadership, futures, curriculum and pedagogy is limited to incremental change, and is not given to daring new imaginings. It is not so much that the broader community is complacent, as much as it appears to be afraid to forsake the past and dream of new futures. Too many members of the community seem to be reluctant to speak out, apparently fearful of the consequences for being non-conformist. Are individuals too protective of their private selves, not willing to reveal their personal dilemmas about the bigger ‘value’ issues? Or is the community just apathetic? I want to challenge our community to dare to think of new possibilities for learning that are more congruent with the culture and future of our new generation of young people. All truth does not lie with business people, despite the fact that the community seems to give them so much authority. I grant that they have an important perspective on employment and gross national product. But education is more than that. It has always annoyed me to hear those in business making the statement: ‘Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach’. Teaching is an honourable profession, concerned with the development of the young, the assertion of values and the creation of a respectful, supportive and


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s ustainable community. And the calling of those who lead in schools is nothing less than that of a prophet in the biblical sense—speaking out for the greater good with the intention of building caring and sustainable societies.

This book So given the urgent imperatives that I have nominated, I have decided to write for a broader audience than school professionals—for all people who are concerned with achieving better school experiences for our young people. I have grouped the jousts into four main areas. I begin in Part 1 with an exploration of new generation learning. I argue that the focus needs to be on the students, their culture, their technology and their needs. For too long what teachers do in schools, the inputs of teaching and curriculum, has dominated our thinking and practice. Schools have been built on a simplistic linear input model of transmission. Knowledge is gathered together in a curriculum and a means of delivery is provided, such as some form of teaching within a structured school setting. While this has worked to some degree in the past, the world has moved on and it is no longer as relevant. In Part 2, Schools: A structural perspective, I examine the collection of understandings, practices and pictures of the future that drive our schooling process. Are we to continue with our image of a school as a place? If we do, will it be as a factory or can we consider some new alternatives such as a studio, a residential community, or a network—virtual or real? And there are some fundamental questions to consider. Are we content to view schools as institutions even though people have changed more than their institutions have changed? Will we continue our reductionist approach to schooling, looking at the parts or will we take time to consider a more holistic model? In Part 3, Schools: A cultural perspective, I examine aspects of the school culture—the way that things are done. School culture is often not explicit, but it is always powerful. It is what guides decision making, determines where time and energy are invested, what practices are investigated and what are rejected. While traditional schooling has had an obvious social benefit, this same traditional schooling has come at a significant social cost. This will be considered as will the possibility of changing culture, which is never easy. In Part 4, Leadership and the Leader, I argue that leadership, through driving reform and managing scarce resources, can make a difference to the outcomes within a community. Questions that are explored include: Does leadership only come from those within schools? What kind of leadership do we need? And should this be through one designated leader or distributed leadership? Can we have too many leaders? And what about the followers,


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can they affect outcomes? Principals have many diverse roles including experts, learners, instructional leaders, cultural change agents, prophets and more. In this part, the human side of leadership is considered, including the interaction between the leader and the role. Knowledge is constructed personally, not just from books and less ons, but also by personal experiences and the community within which that person lives. So the last part, The Knight’s Tale, seeks to provide this context in an autobiographical part. In it I have reflected on my past by describing selected experiences that helped form my present views. I haven’t tried to hide the contradictions, and there are many. But there is another reason for writing this personal part. ‘Part of what we want from leaders is that they should give us something of themselves’ (Mackay 1999, p. 137). But there is more to leadership than that; there has to be content too! Polls are no substitute for leadership because, at its very essence, leadership is about giving people what they don’t already have – a sense of vision, inspiration, or even an adequate grasp of a particular subject. (Mackay 1999, p. 137)

Hope ‘Hope cannot be placed in large-scale changes in society … Social hope begins with men and women questioning cultural assumptions and taking [personal] authority’ (Lawrence 1979, p. 248). So I conclude this part with a reflection on hope from Vaclav Havel, Czech writer and playwright, political prisoner, ninth and last President of Czechoslovakia and the first President of the Czech Republic. [Hope is] a state of mind, not a state of the world. Either we have hope within us or we don’t; it is a dimension of the soul, and it’s not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons. … Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more unpropitious the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper the hope is. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the


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conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. (Havel 1986, p. 181)

So it is my hope that this book will spur you to further discussions and action. I commend the reflection process that I have undertaken to you, as your experiences will inform you and others, generating ideas and fuelling your motivation to take a constructive part in the formulation and delivery of new generation learning. Given that education is everyone’s business, not the exclusive right of a chosen few, it is imperative that many participate in this new formulation.


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New Generation Learning

It is now clear that as a result of this ubiquitous [digital] environment and the sheer volume of their interaction with it, today’s [new generation] students think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors. (Prensky 2001, p. 1)

We have a new generation of students in our schools that have spent their entire lives using digital toys and tools. But the schools that they attend, and the curriculum and pedagogy of these schools, have not changed. Furthermore, when what is being imposed on this new generation of students isn’t engaging, increasingly these students are resenting their time being wasted in our schools (see Learning styles, p. 22). Supporters of our present system of schooling point to the good achievement of Australian students on international tests such as PISA and the improving basic skill test results within Australia. While this is creditable, we must also acknowledge that we have significant inequality in our system and that our present system of schooling is supporting, not addressing, this inequality (see The class that matters, p. 17). It is important to ask whether we are addressing the correct issues in our schools. There is a preoccupation with testing and measurement, and this is limiting the curriculum and the freedom of those in schools to deliver a more individualised curriculum. On the basis of these tests and other

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normative measures, many of our young people do not perform to adult expectations. However, as Amanda McGraw argues in Young people as powerful learners (p. 24), young people cannot be dismissed as shallow or lazy. They think and feel deeply. They are often troubled by their experiences and are turning away from schools to their peer networks to find support and stimulation. We need to listen to their stories and begin to respond differently to them. Furthermore, it is no longer appropriate to have the acquisition of knowledge as the goal of learning. With the rapid knowledge growth of our society, the capacity to learn something new has become more critical than knowing what is currently known. Instead of a focus on the acquisition of specific knowledge, we need to be cultivating the habits of mind and dispo sitions needed for a lifetime of learning. As we will see in Intellectual character (p. 30), it is not about what students know or how smart students are in tests, but about how students invest their intelligence that needs to be the priority of schooling. It is important that students learn to self-regulate their learning, be supported as they access and interrogate knowledge, be free to talk to peers and work cooperatively with others, in a social-constructivist context. The current view of pedagogy involving conventional didactic instruction in subjects needs to be replaced with task-driven supported settings. It is, therefore, not surprising that we find critics who believe that our schools’ approach to learning is ‘astonishingly primitive’ (Moffett 1994). Moffett describes their subjects, textbooks, examinations and certificates as crude efforts to link schooling with society. ‘Homogenising a populace through a cookie-cutter curriculum at once nullifies the diversity that ensures collective survival and thwarts individualisation on which self-realis ation depends.’ (1994, p. 6) And there are also critics of the values implicit in our schools. For example, Moffett finds it difficult to imagine that those who established schools would have foreseen the way they have become based on a materialistic ethic, driven by commerce and, as a consequence, they are now dispiriting and self-destructive places for students (1994, p. 23) (see More wow, less yuk, p. 27). What we need is some bold re-imagining about how learning might be delivered differently. While it is hoped that many of the initiatives for these changes will come from within schools, this will not happen if governments and bureaucracies continue to limit the freedom of schools and families by the imposition of standards that assume that everything can be measured and that what is measured is the most important outcome of schooling. We need to speak up for this new generation in our schools and for their learning. The future not only of students but of our society is at stake.


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Education theory is influenced by prevailing philosophical views and societal expectations. In a strong religious environment, the development of faith and morals provides the foundation for what is taught. For Australia, this situation is more a statement of the past, but it still remains a dominant goal for other countries today. The industrial era needed schools to prepare students to function in work environments. So instead of moral development, what followed was career preparation and concern with gross national product. Given that we are in a knowledge society, schooling now needs to equip students with the skills to discover and access new knowledge and how to apply it. If the desired outcome from schooling is student learning, then the focus should be on students, their interests and needs, their culture, their learning styles and a curriculum that involves and stretches them towards growth and responsibility. Yet the reality is that the present focus is upon schools, their staff and their curriculum. As we will discuss in Part 2, these school structures are outdated and more in line with the industrial period with batches (classes), a linear assembly line (school grades arranged according to age), specialist workers (teachers of different grades and subjects), and uniform products (measured by normative testing and uniform exams). We need to change our focus from schools to students. So we still have, despite rhetoric to the contrary, schools acting as if students are plastic to be moulded to an outcome the school chooses. The schooling process is for experts to gather the knowledge together in a curriculum, while other experts transmit this knowledge using some form of teaching and students have the passive role of accepting what is provided. While this process appears to be rigorous, purposeful and readily evaluated, it is not too successful. Only a small amount is learnt, one estimate is two per cent (Barth 1998, p. 91). The more telling criticism is that it creates on the part of the student a response that can be of dependence or resistance. Instead of a transmission model, we need a more experiential model of learning where the learner is an active participant and the curriculum is not something that is always selected by a person distant from the classroom, but arises from interaction with the real world by student and teacher. Instead of the teacher always posing the problem, the students need to ask questions and the teachers are there to guide, support, role model and to teach in response to the question (see Welcome back, Socrates, p. 32). Given our knowledge of how people learn, and the dramatically different cultural setting of this new student generation, it is surprising that we persist with this outdated, linear, school input model. We need to re-examine our collection of understandings and the practices that drive our thinking about the learning process. What helped us to achieve today’s success will not be adequate for tomorrow. In


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articular, we need to move away from the closed-system thinking pracp tised in schools, where strong boundary fences are erected to keep the world, including its technology, outside and the students inside (see The class that matters, p. 17). The main focus in this part is on secondary school learning, where we can realistically expect students to take more responsibility for their learning and where a more open curriculum is therefore possible. Unfortunately, some schools and many in the community need to be convinced that the great majority of young people can be trusted to be learners and that schools don’t have to be focused on control and management. It is possible to build a learning structure that assumes students are independent, resourceful and motivated learners. In such a structure students would take the responsibility for their learning, and the input of peers and community could be fully recognised as valid teachers within the learning system (see Student-initiated learning, p. 42). The current focus on academic knowledge is distracting schools from the development of community and the growth of mature, responsible, outwardly looking individuals (see Educational fashion or contemporary imperatives, p. 40). One of the realities of today is that knowledge already acquired can be a limiting factor in our further learning. Knowledge, like commodities, can have a shelf life. Furthermore, fixed knowledge stops us exploring new knowledge because we think that we already know the answers. For teachers brought up with different technologies and expectations, this can be an immense problem, not just in what is relevant knowledge for today but also in attitudes and behaviours. How does a teacher, who has learnt from books and teachers at school and university, move from being the sage on the stage, the instructor and centre of attention, to being the member in the middle, co-learner and guide without all the answers? How does a teacher who has spent years gathering knowledge within a discipline cope with the yuk/wow generation (McWilliam 2007) who want more immediate relevance and challenge? (See More wow, less yuk, p. 27.) We also need to dispense with the duality in our thinking that sep arates the mind from the body. A person is not someone who only thinks; rather, a person is one who feels, senses, plays and who relates to others, the environment and to the spiritual. The goal is to move beyond the trans formation of the mind to the renewal and enlivening of the whole person and, thus, of the community. Given that our students experience life as a person, not as a disembodied mind, and that they live in a more emotive, participative environment—using text, images, sound, video and augmented reality—we need to move away from the primacy of a text-based medium of instruction. Also we need to consider the strategic importance and relevance of a significant residential experience for personal and social growth.


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Using new personal technology, today’s digitally orientated students expect to learn in a way that is experiential, immediate, visual and social. They have experienced what it is like to be in a community of learners (see Learning communities, p. 19) and this was not in a classroom! In contrast, many of their teachers are not digitally orientated, and a frightening cultural gap is developing between teachers and students in the way that each conceptualises the world. The gap could widen unless those in schools come to grips with the emerging personal technologies that have given the young so much independence and power. By ignoring, or worse, excluding these from schools, schools are not only ignoring the technology of their students but schools are closing their minds to their own learning. Specifically, schools need to accommodate the three complementary technology interfaces of the Internet, multi-user virtual environments and mobile wireless devices (Dede 2005). The Internet will provide additional teachers and resources from outside the classroom and will support collab oration, provide mentoring relationships and virtual communities of practice. Multi-user virtual environments will take us beyond seeing and hearing about the world; they will enable students to personally experience and participate in the world. In addition, there are the mobile wireless devices that students will carry into the world for their learning. Young people no longer have to rely on the world coming into the classroom. But young people still need teachers. And these teachers need to extend their discipline knowledge so that they can fully engage students in learning (see Disciplines are important, p. 34). Teachers need to break students out of group think, pushing students to explore issues in depth. To do this we need to forgo the breadth of topics students are now expected to study, as this has led to a shallow coverage of unconnected bits rather than the exploration of a topic in depth (see Habit and thinking, p. 37). The community properly seeks evidence of good work in schools. Benchmarks and performance indicators can be important in measuring and improving quality in education, but they provide useful information only about what they measure. What happens to those important ingredients of education that cannot be measured? Do we ignore the excitement factor, init iative, courage, intellectual honesty, curiosity, spiritual and moral values, and the capacity to make connections between apparently unrelated things? Learning can be all of these things. Learning needs to involve us intimately with the world around us, so we need to encourage students to feel, to sense and to value—as well as to think, to reflect, to act—to care for others and to contribute to our community. What we don’t want is a normative school where the teacher poses closed questions with set answers and rewards students for conformity. Learning needs to encourage feelings of wonder and delight and stimulate curiosity that can then be intellectually extended.


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Let us remember that learning is a natural characteristic of a person, ‘but schooling is not a natural act’ (Papert 1992, p. 55). It is schools that need to change, not the learners!

The class that matters The question of class size continues to be a major political issue, but the class that matters most is social class. In Australia in 2007, there is significant inequality in the outcomes from schooling. And this is not just between sectors, like private and public, it exists within each sector. Furthermore, inequality of outcomes from schooling can be as great or even greater between schools in the same sector, as between schools in the different sectors (Education Foundation Australia 2006). The gaps between the high- and low-performing students in Australia are unacceptably large. And to our shame this inequality is not new knowledge. As far back as 1973, the Interim Committee of the Australian Schools Commission warned us that: education in formal institutions, separated from both the home and the world of work, has proved to be an inadequate means of changing patterns of social stratification or of initiating all young people into society. (Karmel 1973, p. 13)

From the UK there is research evidence from the Office for Standards in Education (Gillborn & Mirza 2000) that: the inequality of attainment between social classes has grown … Between 1988 and 1997, the gap between children from ‘managerial/professional’ backgrounds and ‘unskilled manual’ groups grew from 40 to 49 percentage points.

(The measure here was the achievement of five or more higher grade GCSEs.) Are we gathering the right information to address this social inequality? The Director General for Social and Institutional Statistics at Statistics Canada has argued that we need to develop some new understanding of the root causes of the growing inequality in our society. We need to move beyond counting the number of students enrolled in school in relation to the population of corresponding ages and in relation to the measurement of competency in reading, writing and arithmetic. To really understand inequality of outcomes, we need more than the above measures; we need additional local


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knowledge about family background, community mores, institutional arrangements and the labour market, as well as about individual abilities and learning styles (Gillborn & Mirza 2000). We need to look outside schools and consider the impact of social geography on what we are attempting to achieve in schools. There is clear evidence of a correlation between the socio-economic status (SES) profiles of schools and the levels of their educational results (Education Foundation Australia 2006, p. 6). Unfortunately, closed-system thinking (see Beyond silos, p. 62) is still being applied to schooling. Schools, with their limited resources, are not able to attend to the home and community forces that are shaping the student. Schools limit the participation of parents and the community in the delivery of learning, with staff preferring to devote their limited time to curriculum and to the achievement of the government’s set goals. How are families and the community to have more control over the curriculum and the learning process when they have such restricted access to schools? Given the complexity of the social context, are schools—as they are funded and focused today—able to deliver opportunity and relevance in socially disadvantaged communities? If there needs to be a choice between home and school for a socially disadvantaged student, then a focus on the home will deliver better student outcomes than a focus on the school (Mulford & Silins 2003). At a minimum, schools need to acknowledge that by working without the family and community, they will have limited success with socially disadvantaged students. There is a case to be made for not giving the funding to schools, but to agencies that can work directly with families and the community to achieve student learning. If we are to achieve significant changes in how we work with the socially disadvantaged, we need some high profile proponents in Australia— of the same standing as Jonathan Kozol—to write and speak passionately about their predicament. Kozol addresses the consequences for individuals and for the community of the have-nots in American society. He is forthright in pointing out that many, particularly college graduates, have benefited from an unjust system that favours the socially advantaged. He describes the experience of inner-city children as that of ‘cognitive decapitation’ (2005). Brian Caldwell is one Australian who has spoken out. In his book, Re-imagining educational leadership (2006), and significant media presentations, he has rekindled public interest in the social capital debate. But, unfortunately, the key focus that has been taken from this debate is the related matter of public–private partnerships and their ability to deliver better physical facilities. A better more equitable future will not be delivered by providing a Mr Chips in every school, nor better school leaders, nor better school


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buildings, nor by more research into school effectiveness, although all of this would help. We need to urgently address the plight of the socially disadvantaged and that may not necessarily be best achieved in schools. It is not acceptable that schools might be inadvertently contributing to a worsening social situation, supporting one group over another or one student over another.

Learning communities Over the years I have read prospectuses and mission statements for many schools. While there were different emphases, most were generic descriptions of what those who led these schools thought was a good school: ‘helping students to achieve their potential’, ‘a caring community’, ‘professional staff’, ‘exceptional facilities’, etc. Here is one that is different: The community has a culture of learning; everyone is involved in a collective effort of understanding. The expertise of members is diverse; members are valued for their contributions and helped to develop further as the group continually advances its collective knowledge and skills. The emphasis is on learning how to learn and sharing learning. It is not necessary that each member assimilate everything that the community knows, but each should know who within the community has relevant expertise to address any problem. (Oblinger 2006, p. 3)

This is not a description of the average classroom. There is no mention of the inspiring teacher, advanced technology, standardised tests, or of curriculum. There is no recitation of student achievements. Instead of a culture of conformity to a normative image of the good student, there is a valuing of difference, not for its own sake but because it allows for greater community and individual learning. Instead of students being driven or led, we find a community of students who are self-motivated and dedicated to learning. Regrettably this is not a description of a school classroom. It is a description of a community of young people who play games for recreation. Their computer-based games include adventure, puzzles, role-playing, strategy and sports. And these games are complex, requiring concentration and application over days, weeks or longer to play. Many require collab oration with others, and all involve developing new, deep knowledge and values. There is often no instructional manual, but the games are technical, challenging and even mystifying to many of us adults who try to look over the shoulders of players.


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Sadly, in most classrooms, if students are found to be playing a computer game, they are asked to stop and attend to real school work. While most educators are dismissive of digital games, corporations and, particularly, the military have already recognised and harnessed their tremendous educative power. Schools have to catch up. Today students and teachers have unprecedented freedom through technology to bring resources together to create individual learning pathways. But schools and teachers are tied to the old ways because of top-down mandated curriculum and assessment impositions that force them to teach a ‘knowledge’ curriculum. As a result schools remain tied to a fact fetish, despite this being denounced long ago by John Dewey (Shaffer et al. 2005, p. 107). Whatever the subject discipline, the desired school outcome is that students are able to answer questions about these subjects. And because the students (and now teachers and schools) are to be examined, a competitive environment encouraging students to work separately to gather personal knowledge is created. To achieve this personal knowledge, school teaching is based on the ories of learning such as behaviourism, cognitivism and constructivism. While they continue to be relevant, they do not explain the full picture. Today it is not always possible to know how and know what, but it is possible to know where (the understanding of where to find needed knowledge). So as well as building personal knowledge, students need to know to connect with knowledge. Connectivism is a theory about learning where and how to access knowledge. Learning connections will be a more fruitful use of a learner’s time than making the student commit facts to memory. Instead of treating learners as isolated individuals in competition, schools need to emphasise the benefits to be derived from informal learning from communities of practice and personal networks. In this way, tacit knowledge is gained that in turn will be transferred into explicit knowledge. We are in an age of networked intelligence. Being able to network smart technology allows humans to combine intelligence and knowledge in order to create new knowledge and social development. Siemens (2004) considers this idea of connection from a personal point of view. We need a network of others to support us. So a goal of education must be to help students create their own learning networks with people and information. He writes: ‘I store my knowledge in my friends’ as an axiom for ‘collecting knowledge through collecting people’. And ‘the pipe is more important than the contents’. But it is not just students who need to connect, so too do the institutions. It is no longer acceptable for schools to be island sites. Schools need to connect with the community, families, businesses and universities, and schools should be sharing their knowledge and their facilities.


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A learning community, where ‘everyone is involved in a collective effort of understanding’ and where the group continually advances its ‘collective knowledge and skills’, needs to be the goal of education (Oblinger 2006, p. 3). Delivering this is critical for individuals and society. And it will not be achieved by the increased imposition of normative assessment.

Electronic community Many of us are guilty of trivialising the electronic environment and not addressing its real potential for community and learning. The Internet is not just the source of annoying unwanted emails or information on any topic, but it is also a place where a person can find companionship, community and even marriage partners. The community aspect of Internet learning has been too often ignored, with many teachers focusing on ‘the provision of on-line content, or treating e-learning as an extension of the most limited form of skills based training’ (Bowles 2004, p. 1). In doing so, these teachers have missed the opportunity for promoting significant learning that can come through electronic communities. Research in the business world has shown that it is through electronic communities that the strategic purposes of the organisation are best realised. It is also a source of good professional development. Bowles (2004, p. 111) gives an example of a technical support community where the best learning was not a fantastic course, but arose from the ‘sharing of stories of previous machine breakdowns’ by email. It was narratives that enabled problems to be solved, tacit knowledge being converted into an explicit form and not the converse. Bowles notes that ‘approximately 70% of what employees need to know to do their jobs successfully is learnt outside formal training’ (2004, p. 111). I would assert that for school students, out-ofschool learning might be higher than 70 per cent, given the extensive array of skills and knowledge that students acquire outside of school. The new emphasis in schools is not so much on the learning community as on the community of learners. A community of learners is a group of people with a shared purpose or interest and who are able to effectively communicate with each other. Learning in such communities involves sharing experiences, developing trust and participating in a dialogue. In schools we need to be proactive in creating and supporting effective e-learning communities. Just as we have sporting coaches helping to build sports teams, so e-learning needs facilitators to develop community and interpersonal relationships. These facilitators need to structure the environment, ensuring that there is time for group interaction and for the achievement of group identity. The facilitators will need to help and encourage those who


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are shy about chat rooms, as electronic chatting does not come easily to all. Facilitators will need to encourage participation and monitor this as some people resist participating in group discussion, preferring one-to-one dialogue. The facilitator needs to encourage an atmosphere of adventure, maybe help set priorities in the reading of messages, as some get bogged down here, and minimise technology glitches. And, remember, the coach or facilitator does not have to be the adult, young people may be better in this environment and from their experiences we could learn. And there is another dimension to an online community. As well as achieving social and emotional links and providing opportunities for learning, the online community is the new intelligence in schools to be acknowledged along with multiple intelligences and emotional intelligence. The achievement of community intelligence needs to be a strategic goal, as it is in corporations. Learning networks have the potential to stimulate learning activity across a broader community than just the students in the school. The time is right for this expansion; we have available to us significant distributed sets of resources—people and databases—accessible through technology. I believe that the future will see governments investing in social network hubs that involve the whole community. Today we need neighbourhood regeneration and accessible lifelong learning for all in the community. It is through such social network hubs (the new schools?) that we could build new social and civic relationships, which are necessary for our community’s survival. The political environment is increasingly open to the search for alternatives that could achieve higher public satisfaction and may even be cheaper than building more buildings. Real electronic communities exist that are supportive and stimulating. Schools need to be accessing and using them.

Learning styles If we edge too warily into this millennium, clinging to the past, then we may fail to effectively communicate with our young people. We need to understand their learning styles and that means understanding and using their technology, as the technology and the media used by young people impact on how they conceptualise and learn about the world. Marc Prensky (2006) refers to our students as ‘digital natives’ and he refers to adults as the ‘digital immigrants’! He wants schools to challenge rather than blame the students for not engaging at school. Prensky argues that when we adults were at school, we were more accepting of boring tasks. But students today expect to be engaged by everything, including ‘the old stuff … the curriculum [of schools]’. ‘The kids are so enraged as they know their stuff is missing [from school]’ (Prensky 2005).


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Adults face a practical problem. Their brains have been organised differently to that of young people, reflecting the different technologies that were available to them in their youth. Neuroplasticity is the name of what happens to the brain as it organises itself around the inputs it receives. For adults, adaptation to new technology is, therefore, more difficult. But the good news is that the brain is flexible and it will establish new neural pathways based on new experiences. Consider these technology contexts. The baby boomer generation had television that promoted a passive orientation, where you learned by merely receiving information. Generation X had computers, emails, video games and CDs. Their learning styles consequently were more independent, individualistic and active. Now we have the Millennials (members of the net generation, the digital natives), who are more personally assertive and social because they have access to the web, mobile technology and live within online communities. Technology is continually evolving and so is the way that students are learning. New technology fosters new types of interactions and new means of learning. Today’s students have groupware for virtual collaboration, asynchronous threaded discussions, multi-user virtual environments, videoconferencing, and mobile, location-aware wireless devices. And each of these brings new opportunities for collaboration and introduces new possibilities for learning, using different modes and styles. Now, according to Dede (2005), we have a new neomillennial learning style (NLS). Instead of the current individual and isolated endeavours, NLS is learning based on ‘collective seeking, sieving and synthesising [of] experiences’ (Dede 2005, p. 18). NLS involves active learning through ‘immersion’ in virtual community environments and augmented realities with embedded opportunities for reflection (Dede 2005). Reading a book or watching a video may stimulate and help understanding, but it does not allow you to shape what happens next. Immersion occurs when you are in the virtual environment and can initiate actions that have unique and personal consequences. And this has advantages. It is safer; pilots practise flying in simulators rather than planes. It is more effective; instead of a safe driving TV advertisement that tries to engage the emotions of watchers, an immersion is more effective, as we can input our style of driving and experience the consequences. NLS involves non-linear expressions of ideas involving associational webs. NLS involves more than learning, it involves co-designing learning experiences. An area where students are connecting with each other and with knowledge is in electronic games. Consequently, if we are to create a different future where learning is more congruent with the way students think and process information, then one area that should command our attention is the emerging environment of games. It is through games that students can


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participate in whole new worlds, experiencing the concrete realities that books and teachers can only describe with words and pictures. Students can be family members, social planners, astronauts dealing with zero gravity and space, chemists in a lab, zoo keepers, even emperors. Games invite socialisation (shared values) and community (ways of thinking). They involve players in research into tasks that involve sophisticated problem solving and are essentially experiential in nature. They allow students to be on the inside of the experience, not just external observers. Sophisticated games, where you play with others within online communities, can allow us to try different behaviours, reflect on the consequences and then refine our individual identity (see Jekyll and Hyde updated, p. 48). With a massively multi-player online game we can create characters with avatars, and these can interact with the gaming software and with other players’ avatars. While we may want to reject, on the basis of our past experiences of learning, the messy, ambiguous and sometimes non-rational activities that are integral to play, these activities can stimulate the development of cognitive and interpretive skills, as well as personal and social knowledge. For their schooling experience to be meaningful, our students need changes in existing pedagogy, curriculum and assessment. Today’s students wish to be actively involved in the teaching and learning process as codesigners and co-instructors of their learning and this extends beyond personalising the experience. Knowledge sharing among students can be a major source of content and pedagogy. And we need to address assessment beyond tests and papers; we need to be able to assess collaborative nonlinear thinking and we will need our students’ help through some form of student-managed assessment to achieve this. In the UK policy statement Harnessing technology (DfES 2005), the Department for Education and Skills indicates a shift in focus from presenting content to engaging learners in productive learning activities. They commit themselves: ‘We will stimulate innovation by encouraging the development of highly interactive software, drawing on the expertise of the games industries, among others’. We need to incorporate the play environments of students into mainstream pedagogy, curriculum and assessment.

Young people as powerful learners: Amanda McGraw As adults and teachers, our view of young people is often a deficit one. Their literacy skills are declining, their behaviour is challenging, their social skills are poor, they are too materialistic and they are pessimistic about the


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future. We think about young people in cohorts. Classes of young people are easy to manage or difficult and badly behaved. They are not very bright or smart and studious. Once they are defined, it is difficult to cast off the label and often groups of students go through their school experience known as a particular sort of group. Recently I spoke to a Year 11 boy in a Science class who said, ‘It’s not what I think of the school, but what the school thinks of me that matters’. If we are to move forward in education and change schools so that students are more active, independent, purposeful learners, then we need to change how we perceive and position young people. We need to see our students as people who have rich, complex lives and who are not only capable of learning at deeper levels—cognitively, emotionally and physically—but who are craving to do so. Over the last ten years I have sat in many classrooms conversing with young people about their learning and observing them as they work. I want to share here some of the small moments I have written about in my notebooks in an attempt to highlight the rich and diverse lives that young people lead.

Case studies In an isolated portable classroom there is a boy. He sits with his head in his hands. When we talk he tells me that his mind is in the mechanics workshop and he would rather his head was under a bonnet. Sometimes he goes there instead of going to other classes because that’s where he does his best thinking. We map out on paper what he does in his head when he fixes cars and we end up with a complex set of problem-solving strategies. He says that in the mechanics workshop or in the garage at home he loses time and he loses himself. He talks in his head and makes decisions about what to do next, drawing on the complex interactions of prior learning, risk taking, what has been learned from reading manuals and magazines, emerging skills and competencies, self-belief, reflective thinking, echoes of voices that matter and the capacity to self-evaluate. On another day I talk to a Year 7 boy who has on his desk a thick medical journal that he reads when he finishes tasks set by teachers. He tells me about his interest in stem cell research and genetics, and how he regularly visits the library and reads about the latest research in this area. He hasn’t yet studied genetics at school; in fact, there was no science at the primary school he attended. He’s not sure what he wants to be when he gets older—perhaps an actor. Another boy tells me about his passion for collecting antiques while he sits in a maths classroom listening to the horse racing through his hidden earplug. He uses formulas to place bets and the form guide in his pocket is tattered and well read. There are mathematical equations in the margins.


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A Year 7 girl has a novel she is writing hidden at the back of her folder. When she gets a moment or is feeling bored, she picks up where she last left off or she reads over what she has written and makes changes. Another girl swims at 5.30 every morning. She enjoys the quiet momentum of swimming as the sun rises and she gains personal satisfaction from tracking her own growing strength and mobility. A Year 10 boy lives mainly in his bedroom and dreams of having a bar fridge so that he doesn’t have to come out. His room is full of the latest technology and he spends hours playing computer games where he thinks strategically in other worlds. A Year 9 girl tells me that it’s difficult to come to school some days. It takes her over an hour to get there in two buses and before school she needs to make sure her younger siblings are set for the day. She washes the clothes, buys the food and cooks. Her mother finds it difficult to get out of bed and some days her mother needs her to be at home. She feels a deep sense of responsibility. A Year 11 boy tells me about his interest in Nordic history. He met an historian through his uncle and this chance meeting inspired something within. He also remembers his Year 6 teacher who taught him new ways of thinking. The teacher helped him to see that there are connections between things. Now he looks for connections everywhere: between his work in art, in English, in classics. This teacher also taught him how to start with a basic idea and how to stretch the idea out and expand it, to look at the edges. A very slight Year 7 girl tells me about primary school and the bullying she experienced. She talked about the teasing and how it got so bad that she threw a chair at another student. She doesn’t want to have to do that again. She checks herself and calms herself even though the bullying continues in secondary school. A boy talks to me about breeding pigeons and how he became interested in racing them because his grandfather taught him how to. He describes the flight of these reliable birds poetically, and with great feeling he talks about the link they provide between him and his ageing grandfather.

Powerful learners These young people know what it is to think and feel deeply. While they might not exhibit these capacities at school, they do engage in profound personal learning. They know what it feels like to dive into something and be immersed. Csikszentmihalyi (1992) uses the term flow to describe these optimal experiences where we challenge and expand ourselves. It is during these experiences—when we are developing skills, surfacing prior knowledge, challenging ourselves, acting intentionally and making connections—that we develop meaning. We grow to understand ourselves and the world. We are ‘alive’ (Dewey 1991): active and alert. These students are experiencing the intellectual, emotional, physical and spiritual dimensions of learning and


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their experiences, as they describe them and as I hear them, contain an inherent beauty, an aesthetic that is shared, known and felt by others. Young people’s use of technology shows us this keenness to learn, communicate and invent. Young people are not only developing new text types through experimentation, but they are finding new ways to develop powerful networks and take collective action that was once not possible. Rheingold (2002, p. xv) writes about ‘smart mob’ behaviour where young people ‘cooperate in ways never before possible because they carry devices that possess both communication and computing capacities’. Even though young people in ‘smart mobs’ may not know one another in a personal sense, they can act together for shared purposes. They are finding new ways to break down old communication barriers and new ways of creating texts that suit what they want to share and achieve. If it is true, as Rheingold suggests, that we are witnessing the beginnings of a social revolution of farreaching changes to the way we live based on new forms of social power, why is it that schools in the main continue to contain, train and restrain young minds and focus on individual performance rather than on what we can achieve collaboratively? These smart mobs of young people are finding creative ways to use technology to interact in communities that could provide us in schools with powerful new learning models. I am positive that if we opened up opportunities to joust with young people and to listen closely to their ideas and experiences, we would more easily see a way forward in education.

More wow, less yuk Students are quick to decide if something is yuk or wow. Schools that ignore this immediacy and intimacy that young people have with the world and their swift judgmental assessment about what we present, do so at their own peril. The lack of engagement at school today is not so much with the school curriculum as with its presentation. This yuk/wow generation, as Erica McWilliam (2007) calls them, is not arguing that its digital toys and tools are more important than the school curriculum, but it is arguing that digital toys and tools are more engaging and challenging than classroom experiences. As Prensky (2005) has noted, students will: master systems ten times more complex than algebra, understand systems ten times more complex than the simple economics we require of them, and read far above their grade level, when the goals are worth it to them.

So the challenge is to find new ways of engaging students with the school curriculum, making it a wow experience for them.


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I would like to share a wow encounter I had, one that students too could enjoy. On my retirement from my principalship, I needed to separate myself from my busy past and thought that a dramatically different physical experience was needed. So I set out on an epic 8500 km journey across the Nullarbor, my version of a trip to the centre of my being. It was to be a grounding experience to get me out of my school principal head and, so, even though it was winter, I camped. There were many remarkable meetings but none as surprising as with a red tingle tree with a 24 m girth, apparently one of the ten largest living things in the world. The red tingle tree is one of four dominant species of eucalypts in Australia’s south west. As I walked to view this tree, in what is called the Valley of the Giants, I felt an anticipatory excitement. So strong was the feeling that I stopped to consider what was welling up inside me. There was even some nervousness, what was that about? Above all I was hushed, it was as though I was about to enter the holiest of holies. This was going to be something grander than those awe-inspiring gothic cathedrals. The tree didn’t disappoint me. The first sighting is etched on my memory. Its top was broken, no doubt by strong winds and its heart burnt out by bushfires. It was encircled by other huge trees with whom it had fought for light and nutrients. This meeting made me contemplate not just the tree’s greatness but the life struggles that it had confronted. I was curious about its species, its location, its relation to other significant Australian and foreign trees. As I walked around the tree, I was aware of how the tree spoke to me. This was not just a tourist stop; it was a personal encounter that continued to provoke further learning. I was on hallowed ground. What I experienced at that tree is what I want all students to experience as an everyday part of their schooling. Schooling should not be seen only in narrow employment terms (rewards for tomorrow) or as simply the acquisition of essential skills and knowledge (this tastes bad but it is good for you). Papert (1992) noted that ‘Paulo Freire enjoins us not to dissociate “reading the word” from “reading the world” ’ (p. 10). A good education involves a personal encounter and a wow factor. But it needs to go beyond this too. It needs to teach reverence for, and a perspective on, a world greater than the individual. Instead, we are offering our students an education that is based on rational materialism. Is it any wonder that too many of our students are turning to drugs and suicide to escape the boredom and emptiness that such values create? Facts and skills are ingredients of education, but more needs to be provided to nourish the soul. An educated person needs to be able to see a social significance, to be able to appreciate an aesthetic merit and to achieve a scientific understanding. A good education builds on basic knowledge, requires personal application and involves rigour. But education is more than all of this. It requires


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students to address the big questions such as: Who am I? How do I achieve self-respect and self-actualisation? Where is society going? Schools are not about inert knowledge, but are about the growth of people; the extension of their intellectual, social and cultural capacities; and the growth and maturity of a society in which people can live, grow and find meaning in their lives. Jurassic Park (Crichton 1991) reminds readers of the importance of keeping the big picture in mind. The expert professionals of Jurassic Park exceeded the skill and knowledge of their peers, the administrators achieved their given primary goal of cloning extinct species, but together they succeeded in threatening the future of our society. Instead of factories for extending the gross national product, institutes preparing students for some intellectual Olympic competition in basic skills, or government showcases of achievements, schools could be places of significance where real people struggle with meaning and understanding in a safe but stimulating environment. We need to be creating new cultures in our schools so that students are encouraged to discover the world of knowledge for themselves, to encounter the joy of exploration and discovery, and to develop the capabilities to shape their futures and delight in their learning. In schools, as in society itself, this is a time for imaginative beginnings, not a flight to the past with solutions sought in supervision and control. Teachers are under pressure to perform more efficiently and effectively the technical task of imparting knowledge. I am pleased to see teachers resisting this utilitarian view of their role by bringing into the classroom warm, natural, human relationships (Papert 1992, p. 55). We are so lucky in Australia. Our environment is so stimulating. In Australia alone is to be found the Grotesque, the Weird, the strange scribblings of nature learning how to write. Some see no beauty in our trees without shade, our flowers without perfume, our birds who cannot fly, and our beasts who have not yet learned to walk on all fours. But the dweller in the wilderness acknowledges the subtle charm of this fantastic land of monstrosities. He becomes familiar with the beauty of loneliness. Whispered to by myriads of tongues of the wilderness, he learns the language of the barren and the uncouth, and he can read the hieroglyphs of the haggard gum trees, blown into odd shapes, distorted with fierce winds, or cramped with cold nights when the Southern Cross freezes into a cloudless sky of ice blue. The phantasmagoria of that wild dreamland termed the Bush interprets itself, and the Poet of our desolation begins to comprehend why free Esau loved his heritage of desert sand better than the bountiful riches of Egypt. (Marcus Clarke cited in Gordon 1876. This quotation can be found at the entrance to the Great Hall, Parliament House, Canberra.)


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May each student in our schools, in each class they enter, be assisted to find many different tingle trees that inspire awe, respect and curiosity, take them out of themselves, encourage them on the path of further learning and growth, and help them be a part of the greater external world.

Intellectual character In education and in society, along with measurement, there is a preoccupation with the idea of intelligence. Do we have it, can it be improved and what is its nature? Howard Gardner argued against the view of intelligence as a single general faculty of mind. His view is that the pencil and paper abilities tests (still called IQ tests by many) used by schools do not capture the full range of human intelligences. He identified eight multiple intelligences: linguistic, logical/mathematical, spatial, bodily kinaesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic. He is still working on his theory and is considering a ninth, existentialist intelligence (1999). Gardner proposed that everyone has these eight intelligences and that they can be developed to an adequate level. However, in any one person only one or two are usually dominant. Another prominent person in the research of human intelligence is Robert Sternberg. He defined intelligence as ‘[a] mental activity directed toward purposive adaptation to, selection and shaping of, real-world environments relevant to one’s life’ (1985, p. 45). He identified three types of giftedness (intelligences): analytic, creative and practical. He saw schools as focusing on the analytic, at least when it comes to measuring outcomes from school. So he proposed authentic learning tasks, assessment strategies and pedagogies that encouraged complex thinking skills involving all three intelligences. Now we have a new take on intelligence. Ritchhart (2002) asserts that smartness in tests does not guarantee that a student will be smart outside of school. Success in the world needs motivation and certain dispositions. He identifies six dispositions: to be open minded; curious; meta-cognitive; seeking truth and understanding; strategic; and sceptical. So in his opinion, success is not so much about brain power but about motivation and disposition. It is about intellectual character. Ritchhart believes that these dispositions should be the outcomes sought in schooling. Before looking further into these dispositions, consider where Ritchhart comes from in his own schooling. His experience of conventional, didactic instruction was disheartening. No doubt many students today continue to experience school in much the way I did: as an encounter that often denies one’s natural intelligence and


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curiosity, as an act that serves to bind rather than free the mind, and as an institution that treats creative intellect as ‘mysterious, devious, and irritating’. (Ritchhart 2002, p. xxi)

Ritchhart believes that there is a low level of thinking being done in classrooms because the focus is on acquiring skills and knowledge, rather than cultivating the habits of mind and dispositions needed for a lifetime of learning. He would like to see students working towards a goal of increased smartness, rather than seeing it as something they have or do not have. Schools may exist to help students achieve good results in government tests, but if that’s as far as they go, then both students and the country are sold short. Schools need to be shapers of both the intellectual and social character of students. Ritchhart encourages schools to move beyond how smart students are by measuring their IQ, to developing their intellectual character by encouraging students to use their intelligence in inquiry, seeking evidence, using imagination, espousing fairness, and the like. Ritchhart is not alone in his criticism of some of what happens in the name of schooling. Our curriculum and pedagogy can convey to students that the task is to do the work, achieve proficiency and then move on to the next task. It is harmful to plant the idea that ‘doing maths’ consists of getting a question, giving an answer and being told that you are right or wrong … The lesson best learned in [this] school is that you can’t learn without being taught. (Papert 1996, p. 40)

This is teaching for dependency and superficiality. What is worse is that these patterns of behaviour, patterns of thinking and patterns of interaction remain with us for life. For future success, students will need more than knowledge; they will need good attitudes, appropriate habits of mind and dispositions to pursue difficult and often unanswerable questions with confidence. Similarly, if the curriculum lacks challenge, then where will students gain the experience necessary for them to develop healthy dispositions to real world learning outside of school? Teachers have traditionally tried to make the curriculum easy for students, assuming that children’s self-esteem is best preserved by protecting them from experiences of failure or frustration. The result is a gently graded curriculum with an incline that all could manage. Haven’t we all been guilty of trying to do this at some time? Yet the result of such spoon-feeding is that students do not have the resilience to cope with failure and general life issues.


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So a good learning setting: • has an engaging and challenging task-driven program • incorporates a learning community working cooperatively • enables all members to construct and connect to knowledge in a personal way • involves students self-regulating their learning • has as a goal the development of helpful dispositions: being open minded; curious; meta-cognitive; seeking truth and understanding; strategic; and sceptical.

Welcome back, Socrates Real world problems do not come with the task neatly outlined on a printed sheet … they come to us in conversations [and through experiences]. (McCain 2003, p. 78)

Such a proposition would be acceptable to Socrates, an ancient Greek philosopher and teacher. Socrates introduced us to the dialectic method of inquiry, which he largely applied to the examination of key moral concepts. In contrast to the challenges that students meet in their daily living, school problems are not real problems but ones generated by an assessment process that gives prominence to existing knowledge with ‘an over-emphasis on low level thinking required to recall facts for reports and tests’ (McCain 2003, p. 72). And unfortunately it is widely believed that a school succeeds if all its students test above average, regardless as to whether those students subsequently burn their books and turn their backs on future learning. As a result, students are graduating from secondary school ‘knowing perhaps only two percent of what they need to know in order to be successful in the workplace, at home, and in life’ (Barth 1998, p. 91). But this issue is not all the fault of the assessment process. Our pedagogy contributes. Over half the work of developing a solution to a problem is already done by the teacher before the students are involved. The teacher has decided the order of the questions, the priority of points in the material, and the information to be ignored … and laid it out on a piece of paper. (McCain 2003, p. 78)

For too long in schools we have taught the material and then presented some problems working with or relating to that material. It is time we put


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the problem first, as happens in the real world, and then the teaching can be applied to that problem. Students need to have opportunities to experience real problems and learn how to think through the problem as well as to work towards a solution. And the knowledge needed is not just academic. A major goal in learning for any student is to make sense of their experiences, their thoughts and of society. Learning is about personal growth, achieving a stable base from which we can function effectively with resilience in a testing, changing society. In this sense knowledge is personal and idiosyncratic. Hopefully, the learning is also for the purpose of creating a better, more sustainable world. The printing press is still the main technology that influences what happens in schools, even though the printed word is not the most influential technology for students. Furthermore, ‘textual representations of knowledge provide a false sense of certainty and ascribe static attributes typically not inherent in knowledge’ (Siemens 2006, p. 4). Text-based knowledge makes knowledge a physical object, when for many of us knowledge is more dynamic and interconnected, embedded in people, in conversations that include words, images and multimedia. Surely learning needs to be tied to a process (dialogue), rather than to an artefact. In some ways this returns us to a previous understanding of knowledge in the Socratic tradition as conversation, question and argument. It is critical that we recognise how technology is changing what we need to be doing in schools. We cannot ignore ‘web 2.0’, the second generation of Internet-based services that emphasise online collaboration. With these media we are communicating differently, we are experiencing information in different formats and we need to be learning differently in schools. As well, we need to acknowledge the growth in information, 75 per cent in the last two years (Siemens 2006, p. 11). What is relevant information and skills is going to change rapidly, even from year to year, and, thus, it becomes difficult to define a general ongoing curriculum such as has been the practice in the past in more stable times. Schools appear to be fighting technology rather than working with it. With changes in technology come changes in the way that knowledge is organised, created and managed (see Learning styles, p. 22). Today’s students, with their video games, mobile phones, instant messaging, and online social networking, have a way of operating and learning that is different to their predecessors and, importantly, at odds with their school experience, which is designed around earlier technology. Essentially, learning is not about content but about attitudes, actions and relationships. It is a continuous process that should last a lifetime with the focus on learning how to learn, learning where to find knowledge and on knowledge management. Learning is how we survive.


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So let us rethink some of our practices by: • focusing on the person to be graduated and less on knowledge acquisition • emphasising collaboration in schools, helping students to build people and knowledge networks • assessing attitude and knowledge-management skills, not just knowledge • teaching contextualised content by putting problems first • resisting the temptation to give students the product of our thinking, sharing instead the process we have been through in solving a problem • moving from didactic instruction to the conversation, question and argument that we find in the Socratic tradition.

Disciplines are important: Mary Mason We’ve all heard the stories. Some arise from making do with shortfalls in staffing. The performing arts teacher told to take photography—it’s art, isn’t it? The chemistry-trained science teacher told to teach psychology. They mug up over the holiday and keep one step ahead of the students as the year progresses on a belief that teachers can teach anything. Whatever the cause, teaching by the seat of your pants is not good enough. Students deserve a learning experience that will stretch their minds and enrich their understanding. This can only come from teachers who have a deep knowledge of their subject areas. It is certainly not fashionable to say the disciplines—e.g. history, science, music or mathematics—are important in these days of integrated curriculum. It would be unfair to suggest that anything goes in a school as long as there is a body in front of a class. But unstructured, or loosely structured, learning environments cannot serve all purposes. There is also a place for the disciplines—‘humanity’s greatest inventions’ (Gardner cited in Hetland 2002). The disciplines reach well beyond schools, through tertiary education and into the adult professions, research and scholarship. So it is important that the foundations of the disciplines are taught well in schools. Teachers must have a good foundation in the subject disciplines they teach at the beginning of their careers and must continue to develop their understandings through their careers. They are then aware of the shifting conceptual knowledge, the new theories and research, and are able to appreciate the uncertainty that continues to surround each field. Teachers who continue to develop these understandings help to engage students more deeply, and to equip them with language, skills and strategies that enable them to delve, sort, sift and understand in the subject field long after class. Let me explain through observations of student learning. My example is from a Year 9 class that I sat in on recently. The teacher was starting a


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new novel and asked the students what the cover suggested to them. The novel was Boys of blood and bone (Metzenthen 2003) and had two images on the front that merged into each other. On the top image was a fire-like colour within which a soldier’s torso with a gun was depicted. It merged into the darkness of an earthy colour at the bottom. The lower image showed a boy against the blue of the sea and the yellow of the land. The colour of his silhouette was the same as the torso above. It was an abstract, rather than a realistic, image. The students’ reactions were not very articulate. One said it reminded him of fertiliser: perhaps a notion that could have been explored further, even though he was being ‘funny’. But another student looked at the cover of the book and talked about the soldier at the top and the colours of blood and fire. He mused on the sense of the faceless soldier merging into the darkness at the bottom—a kind of ‘unknown soldier’. He picked up the life and death images in the words blood and bone in the title. He looked at the war, as opposed to peace, images. He mentioned innocence associated with the word boys and linked the freedom of the boy at the bottom of the cover to the suffering of the soldier at the top. He talked of the boy in the image at the bottom seemingly carefree in the midst of bright yellows and blues, but moving towards death as his body was depicted in the same colour as the image at the top. He looked at the colours as symbolic of the cycle of life: earth, fire and water. He talked about contrasting worlds which were related. The more advanced student was working from a discipline discourse (Gee 1990), by which I mean a ‘way of behaving, interacting, valuing, thinking, believing, and speaking’ that was acceptable to the disciplines of English. The student’s understanding was becoming refined and expanded as he moved from year to year in his schooling. Issues could be teased out, played with, recognised as problematic, quarrelled with and so on; it was like a game. This is in contrast to what happens too often in class. Some students develop rigid routine understandings of discipline frameworks through the style of teaching they experience: textbook work, worksheets and notes copied from the board. Their knowledge may be extensive, but it is retained as factual material handed down, often to be reeled off in a test. Such knowledge can be rapidly forgotten once the test is over. Not only do these students lack a depth of understanding of the subject (an understanding that greatly assists the memory), but they also miss the thinking skills that allow them to find things out and develop understandings for themselves in the future. Of course, there are variations in natural ability. The student described above may have been predisposed towards understanding the discipline intuitively. In any class, there are students who, whatever the skills of the teacher, thrive in a subject. They seem to have an innate affinity for the subject and are able to interact with its discourse. Sometimes these students can be put off by a poor teacher, but they tend to survive the swings and


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roundabouts of the school system. There are others who find it very difficult to find entry points to the subject disciplines. Teaching by telling is not enough for these students because they are not actively engaged. These students either imitate the knowledge of the teacher to greater or lesser degrees or they opt out. It is for these students that the depth of the teacher’s knowledge is so important. To develop deep understanding a student must internalise knowledge and actively use it for it to grow. John Holt (1964) argued that the majority of students in school learnt things that did not touch the world inside them at all. It was a giant body of facts that they quickly forgot. Gardner (cited in Hetland 2002) would concur and his metaphor is dust that blows away as soon as students leave school. Gee (1990) would argue that if you want this learning experience to be different, the students have to want to enter the discourse of the subject and need alternative entry points that enable the beginning of an active apprenticeship. A sense of belonging in the discourse cannot be imparted to students through ‘overt teaching and instruction’ (Gee 1990). It, therefore, seems essential that teachers have a range of ways in their classrooms to engage the different groups of learners: those who naturally engage with the subject and those who don’t. This requires great versatility and the capacity to differentiate instruction. Teachers can only do that if they have a deep conceptual and ongoing development of knowledge in their field of expertise, so they can adapt it to different ways of knowing. This brings me back to my point at the beginning of this joust. Teachers have to become ongoing learners in their disciplines. Through this they can develop the deep and flexible knowledge that they need to fully engage students in learning. In order for this to happen, the wider system (governments, universities and professional bodies) in which teachers work has to be supportive. At present, it is possible for a teacher to complete a degree and a Graduate Diploma of Education, or a Bachelor of Education degree, and then to teach in a school indefinitely, without any further requirement for professional learning. The Victorian Institute of Teaching (VIT) has just brought in a requirement for 100 hours of professional development over five years in the next period of accreditation. Currently, however, there is a shortage of systemic further disciplinary learning in many subject areas. If the VIT’s decision is not to be squandered, government must fund univer sities so that accredited subject discipline, as well as educational units can be taught to teachers at low cost. Our world needs scientists, writers, historians, mathematicians, lawyers, doctors and nurses. The spark for their adult and professional thinking in these disciplines often comes from school. At the Twelfth International Conference on Thinking held in Melbourne in 2005, the Nobel Laureate


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Professor Peter Doherty talked about how his learning of language and history at school helped him to see that there was more than one perspective in which things could be viewed; and the writer and mathematician Dr Sunetra Gupta from Oxford talked about the joy she experienced when she first encountered algebra at school. Teachers have an extraordinary opportunity to open up learning for students so that they too have opportunities to succeed in the world in the fields they choose.

Habit and thinking: Mary Mason If I ask students in schools to draw a tree, 90 per cent of the students will draw a lollipop tree even though few trees in Australia resemble such a shape. Stereotypical images from infant picture books, early readers and television cartoons seem to have become embedded in their minds. Amanda McGraw asked students some years ago to draw how they see learning. Many of the drawings were remarkably similar and connected learning with school. Students sat apart, arranged in rows, typically looking at maths formulae or reading, and the teachers were always speaking, usually in front of blackboards with a ‘blah, blah’ coming out of their mouths. While there may be truth in this picture, most classrooms I have seen have more variation than this. Furthermore, learning occurs all the time, not just in school. So why do students revert to stereotypes and how influential are those stereo types to their ways of thinking? The students’ tendency to think automatically in groupthink ways rather than mindfully is not confined to questions about learning or trees. It is a technique many students apply to their classroom learning. Formulaic responses are produced repeatedly across assessments in schools and become part of a standard procedure students return to each time they are asked to do an essay, write up an experiment, or complete a painting. Even the most able of students can revert to formula, if in a more sophisticated manner. The system often rewards them! Formulaic responses also occur at university level. David Perkins (2006) talked at the Teaching for Understanding conference in Queensland about the tower problem. A physics professor approached him about his students. One of the problems they had looked at was what happened to a 10 kg weight when it was dropped from a 100 m tower. On the exam, the professor changed the tower to a 100 m hole in the ground into which a 10 kg weight was dropped. The majority of the students could not solve the problem and one came up to him and said it was not fair as they had not studied hole problems. Perkins argues that students become used to seeing questions phrased in certain ways and then respond automatically without


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really understanding what they are doing or thinking about at anything but a superficial level. They revert to what Howard Gardner calls their ‘engravings in the mind’ (cited in Hetland 2002). There is a tendency then for many students to approach school without thinking in an individual way, but adopting reductive and stereotyped survival skills. The big question is what continues to hold this paradigm in place? Within the scope of this joust I will touch on three of the factors that I think keep it in place: a curriculum, assessment, testing and teaching pedagogy in schools that is also automated to a large extent; a relationship and a language between teachers and students that stops students from thinking for themselves; and the way in which the brain works to deal with the complexity of life and learning. I’ll take the last issue first. The Leiners’ (1997) research on processing in the brain suggests that the brain automates knowledge in order to enable the parallel processing needed for coping with monumental quantities of raw information. The cerebellum, through practice, learns to send messages to specific places in the cerebral cortex when action is required. We recognise this when driving. When we first learn to drive, we are conscious of nothing else but the car’s controls, other drivers and the road ahead, and we think very deliberately about everything we do. As we become more confident, we begin to drive in part on automatic pilot and are able to think of other things as we drive. Such automated processes are not confined to driving; they appear in all forms of knowledge and learning. When we read or write, for example, we use parallel processing to interpret or to find words, while at the same time thinking about the conceptual dimension of the sentence and its relationship to the piece as a whole. As an adult who has read a lot over the years, so much vocabulary and knowledge of how texts work have been layered into my literacy processes, in combination with both memory and feeling, that they are largely automated. Vocabulary and knowledge of how texts work come into play when I engage in speaking and writing, but I still need to think as I read and write or I will move into formula-speak. George Orwell (2000) described this brilliantly over 60 years ago, noting that such writing ‘consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse’. He castigated unthinking writing as ‘simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you – even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent’. How many of us would draw a lollipop tree if we were asked to draw a tree? Haven’t we all found ourselves missing a turnoff, on occasion, when we have a regular driving route engraved in our minds? How many of us in our teaching use the same strategies, the same texts, the same ways of working and how many of us have students who slip into the same routines and


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reproduce formulaic responses. The trick in classrooms is to engage students so that they do think, and then to push students further so that they think harder and in the process refine their automatic processes so that they become increasingly layered and sophisticated. At the same time, we need to remind students of the danger of letting the automatic take over. In a program in which I was involved a few years ago, we asked students to compare their thinking time within a term-long, out-of-school program to their thinking time in the regular classroom. At the residential program, they lived together in small houses and learnt much from the process of having to get on with their peers and care for each other. In the courses they did, where the lessons were three hours long, they had choices. When asked whether the term’s residential experience gave them time to think in classes 80 per cent felt it did; whereas, at the conventionally arranged Melbourne campus only 32 per cent felt they had time to think. So what made the difference? In many ways, the residential experience reconceptualised the learning and, therefore, challenged the students’ capacity to predict what was to come. Students entered into each learning experience with teachers, and with each other, curious and needing to actively make connections to prior learning in order to construct meaning. The experience removed some of the shackles of school—timetables, power relations and classroom spaces—which so powerfully construct the industrial paradigm of learning. Obviously not all schools can afford residential programs and a residential program is not the answer to everything. However, schools can and should look for ways of challenging students’ wellworn approaches to thinking about subjects. Here are some of the ways I moved towards a paradigm of thinking in my classes: n I

avoided predictability. I changed things around all the time and I changed the way I went about things. I varied the objects of study frequently enough that I did not know them so thoroughly that the students perceived there was one answer, my answer. n I lived the texts I was teaching. This was natural for me. I would come into class and make the startling statement: ‘Am I dead?’, thinking of The colossus (Plath 1968) where the persona imagined she lived in the ‘cornucopia’ of her father’s ear, never able to escape her imagined belief in his construction of her life. It is difficult for students to have a stereotypical response faced by such an existential challenge! n I established good relationships with students so that I knew them and could work with them individually n I used methodologies which were active. Some of the time we imagined in classes: Imagine you are Jane Eyre and act out the scene with John Reed at the beginning of the novel. Now pause. What would you really


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like to say to John? What are you feeling as you say these things and why? The thinking emerging from this experiential learning was rich and required emotional involvement and dynamic thinking from the students. Pedagogy was about invention and was often acted upon on the spur of the moment and then re-invented by students. n I didn’t do loads of text preparation work at home. Instead, I read theory about teaching and learning that allowed me to go on experimenting. In class we would work on the texts together and I would show my own tentativeness. I became a student with the students, my expertise in textual deconstruction enabling us to move through confusion but also helping us to exist in confusion until things became clearer. And the students did much of the deconstruction and took me to places I had never conceived. n I rewarded thinking rather than technical accuracy when I assessed. Once the thinking is there, the technical accuracy follows because the students take a pride in what they do. It is a reflection of their identity that is being expressed. n I did not do much marking. I would take up substantial pieces of work after they had been reworked extensively. I found talking to students about their work much more worthwhile than writing comments on it. n I became increasingly interested in metacognition and worked with students on their understanding of their own thinking processes n Finally, I loved watching students grow and enjoyed my own growth in a reading of a text. They could see that. My way of teaching is not everyone’s way of teaching. Some of the things I have expressed here are used by other teachers, but all teachers need to find their own pathway. The role of the teacher is to provide curriculum and pedagogy that generates active thinking in their students and that requires teachers to remove all obstacles to thinking in school and classroom culture, and in the minds of students and themselves. As Vladimir said in Act 2 of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1954), ‘Habit is a great deadener’.

Educational fashion or contemporary imperatives I was fascinated to discover a house in rural Victoria that is named Yourin Yourout. Yes, I know that experience. I can think of a time while playing cricket when this name would have aptly described my lack of time at the batting crease. But then maybe the house owner was not a cricketer, but a person with poor dress sense, unable to identify the fashion moment. Or perhaps the owner was a bad educator unable to distinguish between trivial educational fashion and contemporary educational imperatives.


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Yes, there are educational fashions that are in and then out. But there are also significant educational initiatives that are falsely labelled as fads. To distinguish between these is the ongoing task of school leadership, staff, parents, governments and the community. At Years 9 and 10 some innovative initiatives in curriculum, pedagogy and settings are being adopted, despite the fact the critics see these changes as fads to be opposed. These innovations have appeared because it is at Year 9 in particular that we have some of the most uninterested students and, as a result, many teachers prefer not to teach at that level. Increasingly, schools are trying to move beyond the war stories of teachers describing their conflicts with difficult students and classes to the gathering of useable information that might lead to new ways of doing things. One such research program was the Middle Years Research and Development (MYRAD) project in 2001, involving 61 secondary colleges and 195 primary schools. This research focused on the middle years (Years 5–9) of schooling. It involved a battery of questions for students and staff to answer. The results revealed a strong pattern of under-achievement by students and disengagement from school, particularly for boys. The research demonstrated how students become less enthusiastic about school as they move from Year 7 to Year 9 (Department of Education, Employment and Training 2002). In my consulting with schools I have found that in some schools rated by the community as good schools: • Only 25 per cent of their Year 8 and 9 students want to come to school most days • Only 30 per cent of their Year 8 and 25 per cent of their Year 9 students find their work in class interesting • Only 40 per cent of their Year 8 and 30 per cent of their Year 9 students agree that teachers enjoy working with students (Loader 2005). And remember that these are results from good public and private schools, that is, schools that the community rates as superior because they have good final year public examination results or have found favour for other reasons. But the reality is that there are no good schools, only schools that are better than others. Despite these figures, when reform in the curriculum or pedagogy is proposed, such as taking a year off from ‘normal’ academic studies for a program more focused on student interests, these are denounced as insubstantial because such initiatives might detract from the academic image of the school. Years 9 and 10 can be made to be more engaging for students. There are some constructive solutions and these do not include bringing in the police or army. In the area of curriculum it is possible to offer courses that are more appropriate to the middle years, instead of focusing on Year 12 preparation, and to offer electives so that students can follow their interests


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and feel more in control and involved. Instead of making all classes of short duration, introduce longer periods with projects that offer challenge and opportunity for sustained involvement. At present we have too many subjects, each with their own teachers, and this means that the teachers only see their students for a short time each week. While there is variation between schools, the statistics for one school included the following: • The average number of classes taught by a teacher was six • The average number of students for which a teacher was responsible was 124, with a range of 80 to 200 students per teacher • An average Year 9 student works with ten different teachers (Mitchell & Loader 1993, p. 10). If we reduced the number of subjects studied at any one time, then the teachers would have more time with their students and could get to know the students better and relate more effectively to them. And the way that teachers are teaching could also be changed to permit more student direction and control over the learning process. A teacher told me of her conversion. She had been having a lot of trouble with her students—they were refusing to engage in the learning process. She described how the class was unresponsive when she taught them, how she was frustrated and that she was on the point of giving up being a teacher. She described how one student was withdrawn and, from her point of view, a fairly hopeless case. Then the school provided and installed computers in the classroom. Students were invited to work individually, but with the assistance of the teacher. The educational change in that classroom was substantial, with a lot more time on task with students demonstrating greater interest and enthusiasm. The most amazing part of the story to the teacher was not the change in the learner from the withdrawn and unresponsive student to the effective learner with good ideas. Rather the change that excited her was that she no longer identified difficult students but students with different personal styles of learning or with dissimilar interests. Now she was re-engaged in learning herself and recommitted herself to teaching as an exciting career. Yourin Yourout is not just one more binary about fashion in schooling. When it comes to middle school students and statistics such as from MYRAD, choice between alternatives becomes critical. I hope ‘yourin’.

Student-initiated learning Do we really need to be convinced that children are effective learners? Hasn’t the evidence been gathered? I am convinced when I watch my young grandson learn complex tasks such as language. I am convinced when I


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watch young people with their computer games, mastered without adult induction or intervention. Yet the reality is that there is a lack of adult faith in students as independent learners, collaborators and teachers. One school principal has been outspoken. David Warner argues that ‘the community needs to be convinced that the great majority of young people can be trusted and that schools do not have to be focused on control and management’ (2006, p. 63). Furthermore, he urges schools to approach this task with some urgency, before we lose student confidence. Sadly, we need to convince many teachers in schools, who themselves are not good learners, that students can be self-motivated in learning. In a study of school leaders, reported by Brent and Barbara Davies, this statement was made: ‘The staff are very good “knowers” but not very good “learners”. We have to change that over the longer term to build a learning community.’ (Davies 2005, p. 19) And in addition to the community’s thinking, there is a ‘system’ to be changed. Reporting on Malcolm Slade’s Flinders University study, Warner observes that successful students are the ones who are like their teachers. Slade argues that ‘nothing will ever change until … the teachers, the school culture and a credentialing process … are changed’ (Warner 2006, p. 63). And the contradictory thing here is that we are living in a world that increasingly values people who are self-starters. AC Nielsen Research in 1999 (Warner 2006, p. 49) found that employers seek: • independent, creative and critical thinkers • people with problem-solving abilities • great communicators, with clients and colleagues. But not all teachers view students as reluctant learners. And this group of teachers resist, when asked to perform the function of a sheep dog, rounding up the reluctant learners and directing them down paths where students would rather not go. These teachers would prefer to engage the students, rather than compel them to act against their will. These teachers argue that learning is not just about imposed standards and standardisation, it is about personal growth including initiative and responsibility. Many of the teachers who have taken up the cause of student-initiated learning seem to have foundered in the valley of their own uncertainty. After these brave souls had set out on their mission, they encountered a chasm in which they found community disbelief and professional scepticism about student-initiated learning. They heard many voices. From their peers they heard denial: ‘Change? What change do we need to make?’ From the community, voices for the status quo: ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!’ And from the bureaucrats, incremental caution: ‘Let’s take small steps, intricately planned out, and carefully evaluated’. Given this opposition, it is not


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s urprising that these teachers’ anxiety increased, their motivation dropped and they gave up on their mission. A friend of mine argues that the most daunting problems with technology implementation have nothing to do with the technology; the problems arise with those who would use the technology. And I think the same is true for educational change; the problem is not the change itself, but the people trying to implement this. If we want people to risk change, to introduce a new order into schools where students are more in control of their learning, then we need to support those change agents in their transition. The people in schools need emotional and intellectual support to cross their valley of uncertainty. The community needs evidence that the students can manage their own learning and not be always managed by adults. As a matter of urgency, those who have some insight and evidence need to help the people inside and outside of schools to see new possibilities by offering them some new insights, different metaphors and fresh mental models of student-initiated schooling. They need to be beginning conversations and running forums so that more dialogue can occur about studentinitiated learning. They need to be working to achieve shared understandings with a view to defining some strategic perspectives and identifying desirable objectives. There are good reasons to be working for change to the present custodial and managed learning settings in schools and these need to be fully explained. The reality is that change agents are overloaded with work; they have little time for their personal learning. Therefore, we should not only address student learning differently, we also need to give teachers and leaders space to build their learning community. If we don’t, then we can expect that the old ways of doing things will be repeated and students will not be free to initiate their learning.

Farewell to knowledge schooling? Is our focus on knowledge in schools wrong? Perhaps what we package as knowledge is not knowledge, but facts irrelevant to the daily lives of our students and immaterial to the creation of a better society? I am unhappy with our focus on knowledge schooling, but more important than my view is the implied repudiation of knowledge schooling by our government who is showing preference for other projects. For example, our government seems to have unlimited amounts of money to spend on creating a safe society, but finds itself tightly constrained when it comes to spending on schools. Australian spending on anti-terrorist activities and the military has been justified as being necessary to achieve our safety. But is


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that not the goal of schooling; to build for a safe and enduring future? Why not spend the money on improving schooling instead? We could declare that the government’s spending priority is wrong. Perhaps, instead, we should be asking some fundamental questions about what we are doing in schools. Should schools take the lead from government and concentrate on creating safe communities, building responsible citizens? This knowledge stuff could be left to other providers—to the business community that already offers this education to its consumers and to the students who in their consumer role are most efficient learners. Educators need to listen to the community to be relevant, just as governments need to listen if they wish to stay in power. I assert that in schools we have been too focused on the task of educating minds for university, for employment and for creating the gross national product. Our current packaged curriculum, which purports to be knowledge, may be adding value to business and the economy but is it what individuals and society want and need? It is time that we bid farewell to dollar schooling. A community of people committed to equality, reciprocity and sustainability cannot afford selfishness. I am also concerned about the direction that our society is heading. In the past, unfettered capitalism has led to inequalities of income and injustice. The reactive systems of communism and socialism have not effectively addressed society’s underlying problems. Moderated capitalism has made some advances, but we still do not have just societies or a fair distribution of wealth. What we have is a philosophy without a soul. The knowledge that we currently offer in schools does not address this problem. In the past, the schoolroom, the kitchen and the farm yard were where people learned how to live. With the coming of the industrial society, urban schoolhouses appeared with classrooms and promises of economic prosperity for all. Now in an interconnected world afraid of disenfranchised, destructive groups and individuals, it is time that we used a different room for schooling—the living room. One way to do this would be to offer all students a residential experience of significant duration, where the focus can be on growing people and community (see Alternative structures, p. 54). If our country had to confront a war, the government would have no trouble in funding an army boot camp to induct and instruct young people for war. I believe that we have a more insidious war to fight and it is for the minds and hearts of all our young people. The government should support this initiative. The school reforms that we have are delivered through state-determined curriculum, which use competition and testing as instruments of control with the primary goal being economic. Yet they have not delivered all the social and personal results that our government wants. Educational


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leaders need to listen more, consider the bigger picture and be prepared to find new solutions. I suspect that the government agrees with Benjamin Franklin who is reported to have said that ‘most of the learning in use is of no great use’, when applied to creating a safe present and future society. Schools, as microcosms of society, need to be safe places in which young people can grow and learn to be responsible. When we have this philosophy and practice correct we can export it to overseas countries as a better way of countering the ‘axis of evil’ in the world than through exporting our soldiers and police. Questions about the nature of the world and the purpose of life have to be central in any worthwhile educational system. Our lives are profoundly affected by these questions. For this reason, a focus on personal development in schools must be central because all solutions to societal problems depend on sensitive, responsible, open individuals. Our multicultural society offers resources for the clarification of values. Unfortunately, we have a tendency to nullify the rich diversity of experiences that could ensure our collective survival. I am alarmed about the fate of our society and the focus of our schools. Tinkering at the edges will not solve our problems. We need some courageous new thinking and the context has to be bigger than what is in it for us! We need to be thinking about planetary survival and human co-evol ution. We need to move from information to knowledge, to wisdom and then to life. Schooling needs to be reconceived; what it is for and how it might work. Schools offer a way by which we may be able to renew and rebuild our society.

Personal computing: A dream being realised I am amused that teachers are nearly universally advocating that they should be provided with notebook computers by their employers and yet many of these teachers would deny their students the same chance. Are not the needs the same for both groups? As the person responsible for introducing compulsory notebook computers into a school, I have to be careful not to be too defensive in discussing the pros and cons of personal computing. But let me go back and revisit why notebook computers were introduced. In 1990, notebook computers were introduced into Methodist Ladies’ College, Melbourne, as compulsory equipment that students needed to have with them at all times, along with paper and pens. At that time, it was envisioned (Nevile & Loader 1991) that the classroom would be characterised by the transparency of the computers within it, certainly not dominating the classroom ambience. These computers would be convivial


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tools that allowed for new forms of knowledge representation, including graphics, modelling and more. In 1990, the Internet was not available and the notebooks were work stations, not communication tools. Each notebook computer was considered to be personal, in that it allowed its user to create a personal knowledge space with idiosyncratic ideas, data and software of personal value. The ownership involved was not just of a machine, but of knowledge and power. I remain committed to that early dream of personal computing, whether it is with a notebook computer, an electronic slate or tablet or some other portable digital device. What is unfortunate is that this debate, which should be about the education of young people, has been hijacked by a much more superficial debate—whether to have the hardware or not. The debate should not be about the machine, but about a transformation in thinking and being, made possible by a portable digital device. I am the first to agree that the educational practices of many who use computers have not led to better school learning. Much of the new computer-based educational practices have lacked rigour and intellectual depth. In some instances, there has been a translation of paper-based material to the screen with no additional educational value. And I agree that the costs are high. The cost of the computer represents only a small part of the total cost, as there has to be a network, Internet access, people to support the network and the computers, and substantial professional development for the teaching staff. Then there are practical matters such as repairs, insurance, software and in some cases replacement after students have their notebooks stolen. However, I believe that personal computing can enhance student learning. At the cognitive level, students’ learning needs to equip them for full participation in public, community and economic life. With the integration of information and communication technologies into all major institutions and organisations, it is no longer an option, but a necessity, that students can understand and utilise these technologies. Students need to be equipped to deal with multiple representations of information in a multimedia setting. Computers can help people to research, to think and to communicate. The computer has become the digital hub not just for work, but for lifestyle. The development of non-cognitive competencies, such as student attitudes and self-esteem, are equally important, but unfortunately these social competencies are rarely measured by the educational bean counters. Edu cational technologies increase motivation for and enjoyment in learning, as well as increasing students’ control over their learning. Most importantly, computers can be the means of creating a community of learners (see Electronic community, p. 21).


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And the potential of the computer for learning keeps being extended. So far little has been made of computer games in the formal classroom setting; however, this will change as these games are potentially powerful contexts for learning. When developed, and I hope that students and adults will be doing this, virtual worlds can be created that will provide for ‘situated understandings, effective social practices, powerful identities, shared values, and ways of thinking of important communities of practice’ (Shaffer et al. 2005). So what is the dream? It remains that students should have the opportunity of using personal computing for learning and living.

Jekyll and Hyde updated Today I hope we have moved beyond a binary representation of our person ality such as is described in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Now we are conceptualis ing ourselves in a more complex way, as befits residents in an age that is increasingly accepting many of the ideas emanating from chaos theory. Today we can be many people and sometimes we can be them at the same time. In the highly successful ABC television series, Noah and Saskia, each of the two main characters is given three personas. So, while there are two main characters, Noah and Saskia, we meet six people on the screen. For Noah, living in the UK, we meet the person he would like to be and who he projects in the virtual world of a chat room. We meet another Noah, the person Saskia thinks she is talking to via the chat room—Saskia being a real person who lives in Australia. Then there is the ‘real’ Noah, the young man who lives with some personal difficulty in a family that does not understand him, nor he them. Similarly, we meet the three Saskias, the one projected, the one Noah meets and the ‘real’ Saskia. The result is a little confusing—six characters but really only two people. Yet isn’t that life? By now, those who have no time for chat rooms have probably already stopped reading. If you are an educator, then that is a pity as these chat rooms are real, relevant and can be developmental for our young people. Of course, they can be damaging too, as can the wrong food, the wrong books or the wrong friends. Instead of rejecting chat rooms, we need to know more about them, how they work, what is possible and how they can be incorporated into student learning programs. For this reason, programs depicting the use of chat rooms are worth viewing by educators. I remember a psychologist explaining to an irate teacher, who was having trouble relating to what he described as difficult students, that young people need to try on different personalities just like they try on new hats to see how they look and feel. Today young people have a more sophisticated way of trying on new hats—they can try on different personas in a virtual world. In the case of Saskia, she created an alter ego that she used online


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and identified this new self as Indy. Indy is everything Saskia isn’t—selfassured, carefree and sexy. So now Saskia has a way to explore the parts of herself that she can’t express any other way. She can leave behind the image she has of herself as a rather prickly, defensive, shabby-looking teenager. So it is for Noah too. In real life, he is the geeky little brother of the school football hero and is having trouble communicating with his family at home. But in the cyber world he is Max, a super-confident, creative person who Saskia finds funny, charming and a good listener. A particular quality of this program is that it focuses on the introspective side of young people—what they think and what shapes their thinking, rather than what happens to them. This is useful material for teachers as we need to know more of this if we are to be effective. However, the best feature for me is the exploration of chat rooms, which are so important in the lives of so many young people, and how they might be utilised within an innovative and healthy learning setting. For many teachers the classroom is the primary teaching space, but it is not necessarily the primary learning space for young people. In a chat room students can connect with other students’ stories and experiences, they can share knowledge, be energised by the initiatives of others and they can mentor and be mentored. Interactions in this space could lead to joint enterprises. The interactions themselves can be explored in terms of the complex mixtures of competition and cooperation, trust and suspicion, power and dependence, as well as cultural norms. This hyperspace has real potential for learning. Recently, I had reason to ask some school leaders, principals and senior staff if they could envision a classroom where every student had and used a mobile telephone in the classroom. Some were horrified; ‘how disruptive’, ‘over my dead body’ were two of the comments. However, others saw great educational potential, noting that the convergence of technology has meant that the mobile phone is not only useful for communication, but also to store, retrieve and even manipulate information and images. Like it or not, we are living in changing times and this needs to be reflected in the classroom. The classroom will not remain relevant if it excludes our students’ technology. The media properly reports the horrors that can befall innocent young people whether in live or virtual meetings. The correct response to this is not to hide young people away, but to prepare them. Instead of sticking our heads in virtual sand, we need to be out there being proactive, helping them to safely use media such as the chat room. Just as we need to accept a more complex view of personalities than the black or white, good or evil, and Jekyll or Hyde, so we need to seize the opportunities provided by chat rooms, TV series and other out of


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the classroom experiences of the young to influence their growth. The teacher needs to work outside the classroom as well as in it.

Just a moment, have we really got these practices right? Too often in schools we let ourselves be taken along with the flow. We accept what is happening and work with it. We need to be more critical and less accepting of what is considered good practice. Recently, I have had reason to stop and consider five questions that have arisen as a result of observing school practices that seem to be widely accepted: • Are computers serving learning or have they become instruments of Big Brother? • Is the business metaphor of client appropriate for school relationships? • Should we follow the government’s request and supply irrelevant statistics? • Is an interactive whiteboard the best thing for students? • Should students complete an assignment or take a learning adventure? I had been feeling pleased with the way computers were becoming ubiquitous in schools. The computer is such a wonderful tool for personal learning. Then I had dinner with an old friend and he left me wondering. He agreed that the computer can be a wonderful learning tool, but is that what it is being used for? He told me that the primary use many in schools make of the computer is for delivery of content, assessment of students and increasingly for surveillance. So what had been heralded as a paradigmshifting, personal learning tool has become a vehicle for platform teachers and Big Brothers. Terms borrowed from the business world—client and customer—are increasingly being applied to schools. We are told to be more client and customer focused. The first problem is to identify who is the client or customer. Is it the government, the community, the parent or the individual student, because each has different expectations. Assuming we can define the client, is this the appropriate relationship? Should the teacher and the school only be interested in what the client wants? Surely we need to acknowledge the leadership and professional knowledge of those in education. We need to be concerned with truth, the communication of values, community outcomes—not just personal ones—and constructing a positive future for society. In this setting, the customer is not always right! It is reasonable for the government to want schools to be accountable. But is it appropriate to try to describe what is happening in schools as a series of numbers normed against the population? What do I really learn


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when told that my child is in the top 25 per cent in reading? Does it tell me about that child’s motivation, ability to solve problems, their creativity or values? Even more of a worry, can the government assure me that if a student is in the top 25 per cent, this level of achievement will continue when the student comes to apply for a job, proposes marriage or enters community life. We are not talking about a horse race that is measured at age 15. We are talking about the human race that continues well past schooling. The interactive whiteboard craze is sweeping the country. Yes they are so much better than a whiteboard or blackboard that you can write on with chalk or a pen. These new boards can deliver a range of functions to support a teacher’s presentation, including video, graphics, text and an interaction between all of these. The teacher as sage on the stage, with these new boards, is able to deliver a multimedia presentation. This is a step forward in terms of presentation, but is it a step forward in student learning? Sure, it may lift a student’s (or is it the teacher’s?) grade marks, but is that what it is about? An undesirable consequence of schooling is that if you wish to learn, you need to have a teacher. My understanding is that the learning goal is for students to take responsibility for their learning. We need tools that support students such as books, computers, curriculum, peers and adults. A classroom is not a circus tent where we sit around the performing actor and admire their performance. Rather, it is a setting that puts the student at the centre of the action in the real world. Together with most teachers, I have been guilty of asking students to complete assignments that will be assessed. ‘It will be good for you’, I have said to students. Similarly, I have assigned tests and jumped up and down when students have not performed well on them. The assumption is that knowledge is some discrete thing that can be broken into pieces and then tested for mastery, and that learning is some impersonal act. There is an alternative; invite students to undertake a learning adventure. It is not just a semantic difference; it is a quantum jump in thinking. The adventure metaphor acknowledges that learning is a personal journey and not just a destination, that it is an adventure and not a chore, that mistakes are to be expected and the focus is on the person and not the product. Education is not just about the transmission of cultural facts and skills. Neither is it just about creating a knowledge society. Education is about the transformation and evolution of individuals and communities. Have we been too accepting of what is happening in our schools? Every school practice should be examined to see if it continues to be appropriate.


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Schools: A structural perspective

To simply project schooling 20 years into the future is to deny the enormity of change that has occurred over the past decade and which is still occurring. (iNet Australia 2006)

What do we mean when we use the word school? Most people think of school as a place that students go to outside of their homes. While there are some notable exceptions, such as the School of the Air, correspondence schools or Internet-based schools, such as Notschool.net, most schools are named and known according to their geographical location. Alternatively, school can be used to describe the culture of the school. So Eton is defined by its dress code, customs and rules, rather than its geography. Culture describes the way things are done in a certain place or by a certain group. Culture is often not explicit, but it is always powerful. In this part we will explore the idea and workings of a school as a physical entity and so we will be looking specifically at structure. However, Part 3 focuses on the culture of schooling. While structure and culture is discussed in separate parts, the two are interrelated. Culture is influenced by structure. The shape and the furniture of classrooms often determine what happens in them. And in turn, the prevailing societal culture influences the style and functionality of furniture and building. Both culture and structure are powerful determinants of the mental models of students, teachers, curriculum and institutions, influencing how we think and act.

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So, therefore, we will be asking some fundamental structural questions: n Are

we to continue with our understanding of a school as a place? Schools (and universities) as land and buildings dedicated to a community of learners are a relatively recent phenomenon. Prior to their creation, students looked for teachers and travelled to be with them or invited the teacher to come to them. We could do the same again. So do we even need schools today, given our easy access to teachers and learning communities? n Are we content to view schools as institutions? Paradoxically, what has made these institutions strong and powerful—for example vertical division of labour with direction from the top—now makes it difficult for these same institutions to adapt in a distributed, network-based global economy and in a society experiencing accelerating change. n What are the consequences for schools of new technology? The existence of personal digital assistants (PDAs) challenges the idea that a physical school is needed as a workplace for students. A PDA is a mobile work station, filing cabinet, library and community. The classroom can no longer contain all the knowledge that a young person needs, if it ever did. The Internet, as well as giving access to knowledge, can introduce people and link them together, and, in doing so, makes the playing fields of Eton redundant. n If we persist with schools, will the model be that of a factory or can we consider some new alternatives such as a studio, a residential community, or a network—virtual or real? n Is the primary unit—around which we build the learning process—the student, the class or the school? n Could we consider re-integrating formal education structurally with the family, the community and their economic components? n Will we continue our reductionist approach to schooling looking at the parts or will we take time to consider a more holistic model? While Newtonian mechanistic science has offered much with its simplistic modelling, it is producing ecological and social crises in our outer world, psychological and spiritual crises in our inner world, and an unproductive simplicity in our schools. n Have we incorporated into our schools the new understanding of knowledge (its storage and access to it), communication and community that follows the change from print to digital technology? n Do schools need to move from an acquisitiveness mindset of demanding extravagant facilities and unnecessary programs and staff?


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n Given

that most experimentation in schools involves only incremental changes in existing designs, how do we achieve the deep innovative changes to the design itself that are necessary to realise new learning possibilities for a new generation of students in a knowledge society? n Should the school curriculum be focused on the academic or the social and what part should market forces play in school design? Is there some merit in the de-schooling scenarios? n Are we to continue with the emotionally-charged debates over public versus private schooling, or is there a third way? Our proud history of free compulsory education for all is a significant achievement, but it remains restricted by our history and culture. In 1955, a highly trained observer, Professor Freeman Butts, made a perceptive observation that continues to be relevant today: Underlying your centralised systems of state education [in Australia] are two basic assumptions: (1) a uniform policy for all students in a state is a good thing, and (2) a uniform policy can be achieved only when the basic decisions are made by a relatively few people. Uniform policy seems to apply to school buildings and facilities, to educational expenditures, to subjects in the curriculum, to teaching methods, to standards of achievement of students, to classification, appointment, promotion, and salary schedules for teachers, and to the preparation of teachers. I think I find a suspicion or at least a feeling of discomfort in the fact of variety, difference, flexibility, and change. (p. 14)

My hope is that we can move beyond this discomfort observed by Butts and demonstrate flexibility, show innovation and courage, value difference and respond more personally to each of our students.

Alternative structures Being in today’s school is a bit like being on a train and the trouble for students is that’s when educators can develop a one-track mind. Think about school from the structural point of view of a classroom, and you’re soon going down the track of classes in which students are taught academic and cultural programs. As well, you’re travelling along routes that are determined by a hierarchical leadership and an externally imposed curriculum according to timetables that dictate exactly what can happen and when it can happen. If the train track isn’t your metaphor, chances are you’re stuck with a factory metaphor that sees students as some kind of raw material to be moulded and graded as products that emerge at the end of the assembly line.


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There are, however, other metaphors for school structures and to adopt any one would mean a significant change in our thinking about schools. Consider these: • School as a parking lot, a place for students to be while their parents work • School as a shopping centre, where students choose where and what they purchase and where they stop to socialise • School as a studio, where uniqueness is cultivated and individual workers have their personal work spaces and specialist tutors • School as a network of different communities, virtual or real, that provides access to knowledge, teachers and support • School as a learning services broker, providing guidance on services available, advice on their appropriateness and assessment of outcomes • School as a game community, in which we participate as real and virtual players • School as a house, where we live and learn. I will briefly describe each of these metaphors.

The parking lot School as a parking lot is more of a consideration when both parents, or the single parent, have to work outside the home. This may still be the case for many; the ongoing protection and safety of the young is of paramount importance. However, of greater concern is to see schooling described in such a passive and negative way. The growth and development of young people should be the focus, rather than the comfort of the parents. The goal should be to create an interactive, challenging and engaging environment that may, or may not, be outside the home.

The shopping centre The school as a shopping centre metaphor is a consequence of ‘wanting nearly everybody to attend high school, nearly everybody to graduate from high school, and nearly everybody should find the experience constructive’ (Powell, Farrar & Cohen 1985, p. 1). These are comprehensive schools with a curriculum for everybody. Students are offered many courses on the assumption that if a student chooses a course, then the student will be more motivated to study it. The shopping centre metaphor has been extended to the construction of new school buildings that are no longer strictly singlepurpose classrooms isolated from the community. They have been replaced by a more student-friendly community setting that physically resembles a shopping centre, places where students like to gather and socialise. The idea now is being extended further to the full-service school with places in the


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shopping mall school for other services, such as retailers, police, social workers and medical specialists.

The studio School as a studio already exists in part in many schools, particularly in practical subjects such as arts and crafts, and technology subjects involving paint, cloth, food, wood, metal and plastics. In studios there is an emphasis on individual creativity, as well as gathering skills and technical knowledge. Students are given personal work spaces and provided with specialist tutors. This notion could be usefully broadened to apply to knowledge acquisition in other areas. Do you really need to attend classes in mathematics, English or history to learn the skills and knowledge in these subject disciplines? Given that teachers are no longer the primary source of information in this knowledge society, might not this open studio approach to learning be applied more widely? Not all students have to be driven or coaxed into learning and if they need to be, is that not because of the way they have been taught, rather than an inherent lack of interest or motivation in the students. Our young people are new generation learners and, consequently, their learning needs to be addressed differently.

The network The idea of school as a network is attracting a lot of interest from different parts of our community and it is developing for a number of reasons. Parents may be disillusioned with existing schools; they may have personal reasons such as their child being bullied; they may have political or religious reasons for wanting a special environment for their child; or they may have practical lifestyle reasons such as continuous family travel and they need a more flexible structure that can accommodate their mobility. The network school would provide access to knowledge, teachers and support. It would not need to be constrained to a school year of 42 weeks or a school day of 8.30 am to 3.30 pm, five days a week. A network school might be virtual with video and electronic access, and could create an effective community of students and adults through this means. Or the network might be a mixture of home tutors, dispersed school rooms in the community and online activities. A network might be supported by means of transport, such as buses if the school is physically dispersed through the community, or by broadband wireless communication if it is an electronic community. A network is flexible and could be built to an individual’s needs. Governments have noticed that this style of education delivery is less capital dependent, as it can use existing infrastructure. Government money would no longer be required for buildings and maintenance, but could be directed towards supporting students and their families, subsidising teachers to work individually with students, developing indicators, and overseeing


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measurement and accreditation arrangements. Money could be introduced into schooling by private and community providers and altruistic organisations. And an additionally attractive feature for students and their parents would be the access available to the best teachers in the world (delivered electronically), not just the local school teachers.

Learning services broker School as a learning services broker would be a deliberate separation of advice and guidance from the providers of educational services. The learning services brokers would be scattered throughout the community, needing only offices, not halls, playing fields or specialist learning spaces. They would be specialist enablers who would be aware of what services were available and would be trained in assessment, guidance and monitoring of students. Students and their parents would have multiple providers of learning and teaching services available from which to select in a market economy. But how would students and families find, choose and have monitored services that are the most appropriate for them? They would seek advice from experts, just as happens in insurance and other fields where brokers have existed for many years. Today, students and their families have no option but to accept what services the local school can provide, even though it is acknowledged that no school can provide all the services that individuals desire and need. However, learning services brokers could help students to locate appropriate services from the diversity of services in the community. Services would only come into existence to address an identified need, and providers and brokers could work closely together to meet that need. Learning services brokers would work not just with school-age students, but with the whole community, on the basis that learning is continuous and lifelong for everyone. Learning services brokers would be aware of professionals other than teachers who could offer specialist services too. For example, they could source authors and journalists for those who are learning to be a writer, or doctors, nurses and other health professionals for those looking to a medical future. Just as the teaching and learning services would be from multiple suppliers dispersed physically and electronically, so too could the assessment providers be multiple and dispersed. As an additional service, the learning services brokers could assist students by giving guidance about necessary and appropriate testing.

The game community The networked community could be taken to one more level of abstraction: school as a game community, in which students participate as real


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and virtual players. Games that provide virtual immersion environments are powerful vehicles for learning. Immersion occurs when you are in the virtual environment and can initiate actions that have unique and informative consequences. The power of games as a learning environment is that they are individualised; we choose our levels and are motivated to attain higher levels. Games are experiential—players are on the inside. Games are engaging— providing immediate and contextualised feedback. Using games it is possible to achieve a sophisticated learning of personal and group identity in a less risky way than in real life. Sophisticated games, where you play with others using online communities, can allow us to try different behaviours, reflect on the consequences and then refine our individual identity. Network-based games have real communities too.

The house, where we live and learn Instead of thinking of classrooms, we could think of the rooms and spaces that a family might use—kitchen, dining room, family room, study, bedroom, bathroom, backyard and community areas. Then we have school as a house. Instead of an artificial curriculum, we could think of a curriculum derived from family and community living, with individuals learning, growing and playing in a convivial and supportive family environment. Since I believe a residential experience should be an option for every Australian school child, I have worked to make this a possibility. I have done this by arguing for it and establishing two settings (Marshmead and Clunes) that I hope will be a stimulus for others. Marshmead, the residential facility for Methodist Ladies’ College at Mallacoota, Victoria, has houses for student learning set up on an isolated farm surrounded by rainforest. Comfortable houses for students and staff were built on an old farm, and placed in a village-like setting. Students could choose to spend eight weeks there during the school year and 95 per cent did. To a large extent, the residential structure determined the curriculum. Instead of devising an out-there curriculum with an external examination, students needed to solve immediate personal questions like ‘What does it mean to manage my life within the context of a real community?’ Students were from Year 9, an age group that is looking to express its growing maturity in a more appropriate setting. They were given an environment that allowed for some independence from family and enough time to develop new sets of behaviours. In such a setting, with adult guidance, students could experiment with different authority structures involving peers, explore personal questions such as ‘who am I’ and develop positive relationships. These Marshmead houses allowed the exploration of both home living and community life as the houses were part of a small village. In


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the village, students shared experiences of life and work, and participated in community meetings to deal with current issues and future plans. There was no need for an imposed curriculum; it arose out of living at home and in a community. The adults responsible for the students, together with the students, built a curriculum that emerged from the setting, the relationships that students entered into and the skills needed to manage the daily chores of living. Instead of essays for the teacher, students were writing to friends and family, reflecting on their experiences. The science was practical, arising out of daily living. There was not just an exploration of the past history of their home and village, students felt they were part of a history that would be read by those who followed. The geography of the area was experienced, as well as explored. Then there were experiences and studies in politics, psychology and sociology. Given that they were also meant to help each other in sickness, there were also some medical studies. Changing schools to Wesley College, Melbourne, allowed me to rethink the setting for this residential experience. Why did the residential experience have to be a retreat from the world? Why did it have to be for only one gender? So at Wesley College, together with staff and the board, we chose a rural town in which to establish a new co-educational Wesley College residential community. The focus was not to be on isolation, but rather on community. An early gold mining centre, Clunes, was chosen because the town was historically significant and, very importantly, because the Clunes community welcomed the introduction of students into the town and agreed to participate meaningfully in their education. In this way, the school community was to be enlarged to include adults. To ensure the integration of the school and the town, minimum facilities were provided at the school site with maximum use made of the town facilities, including the town hall, swimming pool, library and the shops. This environment was equally as successful as Marshmead. Surprisingly, it transpired that Marshmead and Clunes were not just a place for learning for the resident Year 9 students. They were also places for learning for the families who were without their children for eight weeks and for teachers, principals and curriculum writers who were stimulated to rethink learning and curriculum. The power of the residential setting for learning is not new. History shows that in most societies, whether primitive, ancient or modern, use has been made of some form of residential training as a means of transmitting mysteries—as in the training of warriors and religious elites. The residential setting is a powerful vehicle for a community to use to transmit their values, norms and cultural patterns. Given the many different metaphors we could use to conceive of schooling, why do we persist so determinedly with the classroom?


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Schools have resisted change If we look at other institutions such as banks and hospitals, we see bigger changes in the way they operate than what we see currently in schools. For most of us, the ATM and the Internet have become the bank, not the building in each shopping centre that was the only bank to our parents. Welcoming day surgeries have replaced large, institutionalised hospital wards for many medical procedures and the treatment of the mentally ill is radically different today with the near elimination of psychiatric residential hospitals behind high walls. Schools, by comparison, remain remarkably similar to the ones that our parents experienced—schools separated from the community, imposed state curriculum, students in classes directed by teachers. The teacher is still the central person, the pedagogy is didactic, and the technology has changed only incrementally with, for example, interactive whiteboards replacing blackboards. Schools have resisted revolutionary changes in paradigm and technology. They continue to look back to their origins rather than responding to new challenges and needs. It is worth noting the origin of today’s schools. Two traditions are reflected in this [school] culture, and visible in most schools: the monasteries which acted as closed repositories for knowledge in the form of manuscripts; and the requirements of the industrial age to instil and replicate standardised knowledge and habits. The result is a curious hybrid of factory, sanctuary, prison and asylum. (Bentley 2002, p. 6)

Unfortunately for those whose practices look back to the origins of schools, what we now want from schools is different; the community has moved on, but the institution and its defenders have not. Students, and their parents, are seeking a personalised education and a means of social bonding that counteracts the decline of traditional forms of authority and community. And there are new non-school players that are willing to provide personalised out-of-school learning opportunities within the community. As well, there are the opportunities for learning using digital technologies. With these technologies, informal learning is eclipsing formal learning in importance; at least as the students see it. Schools are struggling to hold it all together. The knowledge growth of our society is too rapid for the current fixed view of curriculum and pedagogy. The capacity to learn has become more critical than knowing what is currently known. The problem that schools need to recognise is that they have been built around dated structures that include: the primacy of text; the division of knowledge into subjects, students into classes, subjects into rigid


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t imetables; and a pedagogy that fits these structures. Technological innovations that support these old ways have been accommodated into the existing structures. But technological innovations that are at odds with existing structures are often rejected. The new digital technology (computers and their digital attachments, including the Internet) has created a new generation and they need new paradigms of thinking and new structures if they are to benefit from schools. Outwardly, there is an acceptance of technology into schools, but it is not deeply embedded. For example, spreadsheets have been introduced, but the mathematical skill and knowledge that was needed in pre-spreadsheet days continues to be taught. Given the benefits of word processing to support writing, typing of notes has been accepted into schools, but mobile messaging—the language of many—is not allowed into the classroom. Data shows and overhead projectors are allowed, but virtual reality games are excluded from most classrooms. While teachers have learnt from text and tutors, their students prefer to learn from multimedia, multi-user virtual environments and an increasing number of augmented reality interfaces through their computers. Yesterday’s hand-written essay has been replaced with a word-processed document, but opportunities for publishing on an intranet or the Internet are not widely available as part of school learning and assessment. Schools have become used to dealing with simplified models of life, with logarithm tables and other relatively primitive helps, but today with technological modelling and other digital assistance, real problems could be addressed. But is this happening in schools? Simply adding technology may not change anything. Computer technology can be implemented, paradoxically, to close down imaginative horizons, to implement only those repetitive learning tasks such as maths tables, spelling, grammar, and to reinforce old habits. The reality is that in the past, schools were the primary source of knowledge, but for the youth of today there are many sources of knowledge and schools are rapidly dropping down the list of information sources that count. Meanwhile, our young people are not out there puzzling about the changes that are happening around them. They have a love affair with digi tal technology, which they find to be empowering. And this is true for many of our teachers who have made the leap into technology. However, it is not true for most schools and the result is that there is a growing divide between the learning that schools are offering and the learning opportunities to young people outside of schools. Seymour Papert has been an outspoken critic of the learning policies of those schools that have sought to limit the computer’s subversive power to change the learning paradigm. He characterises those schools as living organisms and sees them as defending themselves against a foreign body (the computer) by putting into motion


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‘an immune reaction whose end result would be to digest and assimilate the intruder’ (1992, pp. 39–40). In resisting transformational change, schools may find that they have been left behind. As in all other fields, technology changes everything and eventually it will dramatically change schooling.

Beyond silos We now have a new jargon word entering school terminology. It is silo—a word that previously I had associated with wheat storage. The word’s beauty and power come from the graphic image it projects of a vertical container. Schools are silos because they have an existence quite separate from their community; they are not horizontally integrated with their community. In recent times we have been focusing on the silos, looking to improve the productivity of schools. Research and common sense remind us that the home and the local community need attention too. While we know that the social environment of the learner is important (for example, educational outcomes in deprived areas are worse than those in non-deprived areas), we have chosen to keep the focus on schools rather than on the community. Research tells us that the gap in outcomes between the socially advantaged and disadvantaged is growing rather than narrowing (Power et al. 2002, p. 64). This is not just unfair; it has implications for a sustainable society. The report Every child matters (HM Treasury 2003)—which sets out proposals for reforming the delivery of services to children, young people and families—reminds us that all students matter, not just the rich or the successful. They matter because they are people and not just units in an economy or statistics in a review. In reviewing the situation, Every child matters finds that our current failures occur as a result of many agencies, each doing a little but no one taking direct responsibility. Here again we meet the idea of silos, not one but many, specialist agencies such as schools, health institutions and law and order institutions, with little horizontal integration between them. Every child matters calls for more integration between the various silos. Specifically, it wants an extension to what schools currently do, such as the extended school model that provides family and student support at the school. But will that be enough? It is time to acknowledge that our silo-structured society impedes learning, particularly for the socially disadvantaged. Furthermore, the success criteria being applied to our schools relate more to successful silo functioning than to successful student functioning in our complex world. These criteria are no longer appropriate if we wish to create a just and sustainable world where every student is to be valued.


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I was very taken by this football analogy that I heard from a fellow principal, John West-Burnham (personal communication 2005), applied to the outcome of schooling: A football team does not improve its league position by setting its players to run faster or pass more balls. It has to score more goals; running and passing are necessary but not sufficient factors in winning matches. Improving schools is a necessary but not sufficient component of educating a society.

Higher reading and number scores are good achievements; however, they do not necessarily lead to a better outcome to schooling (see Intellectual character, p. 30). If we are to break out of the silos, can we trust the leadership of school professionals? A resounding yes, if we are speaking of their ability to deliver within their present conceptualisation of their profession. But we are asking them to step outside. Can they do this? Professionals, just like organisations, are likely to resort to self-protection in the face of disruptive change … The challenge is to build professional identities and learning communities that are orientated towards adaptation and radical innovation. (Bentley 2002, p. 6)

Achieving a better future for all students will not be easy. Changes to accommodate horizontal integration will disturb the current hierarchies, both in schools and in the community.

Thinking outside Australia As an international researcher at the National College of School Leadership in the UK in 2004, I was stimulated to consider options that do not assume that the old roles of schools will continue, and if they do, that these roles may be addressed by non-school solutions. In Australia we could learn from the healthy debate arising out of two differently focused UK reports into education. These reports are Every child matters (HM Treasury 2003), where there is a focus on the child, and Unique creation (Miller & Bentley 2003), where there is a focus on the institution—the school. Every child matters begins with the child and not the school as the critical element. It identifies five outcomes that matter most to children and young people:


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• Being healthy, physically and mentally • Staying safe • Enjoying and achieving • Making a positive contribution • Economic wellbeing. The other report, Unique creation, begins with the school and identifies five roles for schooling. These roles are: • custody—protection of the young while the parents work • cognitive development—teaching the knowledge, skills and understandings necessary for these times • behavioural rules—formal and informal behavioural rules and routines • socialisation—dispositions, attitudes and values including fairness, competition and responsibility • screening and sorting—the intellectual, vocational and economic task of placing students within the community. Unique creation assumes that the five roles of schooling will continue to be required and then asks how these might be delivered in the future, given the dramatic changes that are happening in our society. In contrast, Every child matters is much more focused on individuals, their socialisation and caring for them. Every child matters recognises the possibilities of schools, but wants them to broaden their role and include new professionals in order to extend the services they provide. Every child matters suggests: • Sure Start Children’s Centres that combine nursery education, family support, employment advice, childcare and health services on one site • full-service extended schools that are open beyond school hours and include breakfast and after-school clubs with childcare, health and social support integrated on site • out-of-school time activities that include a young people’s fund to support these activities, to address homelessness and to provide other services to support young people and their parents. It is informative to compare the background to these reports and the premises they are based on. As a government report, Every child matters is concerned with the at-risk members of the community for which not enough is being done. It is to the UK government’s credit that these reforms are not couched in economic terms as they might have been in Australia, where the gross national product has for too long been a national benchmark for what should be done. The government paper is explicitly for every child, boldly proclaiming that each child matters.


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The commissioned Unique creation report is more concerned with the evolution of schools. Unique creation aims to generate debate over the strategic choices about schooling for the coming decade. It acknowledges that schools have been pivotal in the past because they have efficiently delivered outcomes including: protecting the children of working parents; ensuring the basics of socialisation into our society are taught; and inducting the majority of students into work and citizenship. However, the report finds that the present functioning of schools presents barriers to change. Three features are selected out for criticism: • The current approaches to curriculum and pedagogy, involving specifying curriculum content and didactic teaching to class groups, do not develop the necessary skills of independent learning • Schools are not doing enough to socialise the young • Present credentialing is not providing accurate information on a person’s or team’s capacities. Unique creation identified six possible scenarios for the future, and classified these into three groups based on key trends in the ways that schools are developing in OECD countries: n The

first two scenarios are essentially status quo scenarios. They build on what happens in schools today, where we have strong, central control used to manage public and private schools. These two scenarios are the bureaucratic public school system, with even greater government control, and the market-model private system of schools, characterised by competitive market forces. n Then there are the two re-schooling scenarios. They involve refocusing and revitalising schooling around different centres. One scenario places the emphasis on citizenship, collective schooling and wider public values. These would be schools as community centres with staff who have a broader profile than teaching, such as social workers, nurses, youth advisers and family members, and the management of these schools would involve other social agencies including law and order enforcement agencies, hospitals and youth centres. The other scenario is for more emphasis on schools as learning institutions. These would be academic schools with a primary focus on cognitive and pedagogical tasks and incorporating lifelong learning. n The remaining two are de-schooling scenarios. The first of these envisages a total collapse of the existing system through lack of public confidence and inability to deliver. It is referred to as the meltdown scenario. The other de-schooling scenario sees the school break out of the boundary of the physical school grounds, utilising learning networks made


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possible by the growth of the Internet. In this scenario, the school is dispersed into the community with the student and the community taking more responsibility for learning. This scenario utilises new opportunities for the supply and delivery of education, and potentially introduces new sources of private and public funding. It is a pleasant change not to be debating private versus public as if schools’ only choice was a binary one or discussing how to deliver economic sustainability, which assumes a single reason for schooling. Instead, these two reports invite us to consider alternative scenarios in which the old roles of schools may not continue to apply, and if they do, they may be addressed by alternative solutions including non-school solutions.

Quantum schooling Today as a community we have a collection of understandings and practices that are derived from some mental model and which drive our schooling process. Some of these come from the outside world, from science and the everyday (for example, that the sun will rise tomorrow and gravity will keep us from floating). Some come from within us, like our fears and hopes. It is important that we recognise the models that we hold in our minds and determine whether they continue to be relevant. A powerful mental model, one that supports assumptions that we have employed for too long in schooling and society, has its basis in mechanistic science. For many hundreds of years we have subscribed to the concept of atoms being the basic building blocks of the universe. By the early eighteenth century, following scientific studies by Isaac Newton and other scientists, this mechanistic science began to be applied to all aspects of life. The world was modelled as separate working parts bound together by forces. As a result, organisations were seen as composed of separate functioning parts, problems were tackled individually and in isolation, and labour was divided to undertake the separate functions. Society came to be seen as a collection of individuals with their personal trajectories, relating through action and reaction. You understand the world, the organisation or society by understanding individuals or sub parts. ‘The average modern person experiences himself or herself as just in the world—not of the world [not part of something bigger]’ (Zohar & Marshall 2001, p. 27). Philosophy and psychology adopted this thinking. John Locke, the seventeenth century philosopher, asserted that the social whole was an illusion, what is real are individuals. Freud saw individuals as ‘isolated within the impenetrable boundaries of the ego’ (Zohar & Marshall 2001, p. 28).


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In the context of an atomistic model of the world, it was assumed that individuals will always choose to act in accordance with their selfinterest. Likewise, schools can be seen as isolated institutions or they can be viewed as an aggregate of individuals and roles. This emphasis on isolated and separate individuals in organisations has led to the development of fixed roles and hierarchies within rigid bureaucratic organisations. It has also led to some very black and white thinking. Examples of these are the expec tation that a statement is either true or false, a course of action is either good or bad, and we have an emphasis on the unchanging and the certain—ambiguity is not acceptable. Nature is seen as other than ourselves, a force to be subdued and used rather than a part of us and we a part of it (Zohar 1990; Zohar & Marshall 2001). We can see the outcome of this atomistic thinking in our schools: • Schools are seen as separate from homes, workplaces, sporting arenas, shops and even society • Roles are delineated—learners or teachers or administrators or aides— thus bureaucracies are created • Knowledge is compartmentalised—history, geography, mathematics, etc. • Mechanistic thinking prevails, there is a right way to be followed—this curriculum, this assessment, these staff and these outcomes • Competition is the dominant way of operating—competitive exams • Materialism is the dominant philosophy and motivation • A sharp line between human beings and the material world is drawn. An important part of human learning has been our capacity to extract the parts from the whole and then to apply laws to these parts. Mechanistic science (and reductionist theory) has given us the rapid growth of science and civilisation. We are only able to live in the complex world of today because we have made such progress by creating these mechanistic models that allowed us to move forward. But tomorrow demands more! The science of Newton and others is now known to be crude and only an approximation. It has been superseded by quantum physics, together with complexity and chaos theory. It is time that we in schools upgraded our thinking to move from parts to wholes, from mechanical to organic models and from simple to complex structures. Quantum physics and complexity theory gives us a more general and inclusive model for thinking about our experiences, our institutions and ourselves. This new physics gives us a vision of society and organisations as wholes not just aggregates of parts, allowing us to better comprehend our complex world. We no longer need to think of rigid categories of space and


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time, or of impenetrable matter, or strictly determined laws of motion. It is no longer just our struggle, but the human struggle or even the world’s struggle. A new kind of physical holism can replace the emphasis on separate parts and so we can have dynamic relationships replacing old tensions between isolation and collision. No longer is the choice either–or, it may be both; quantum things can be both particle-like and wave-like at the same time. We need to think about the whole and sometimes this is more important than the parts. Therefore, quantum thinking in our schools could involve: • a continuity between home, school, society, work and play • an individual holding interchangeable roles, including two different ones at the same time, for example, learner and teacher, leader and follower, administrator and researcher • unified knowledge with problem-centred, open-ended inquiry. Primacy of the whole, rather than an exclusive focus on the parts, with human consciousness acknowledged alongside the observable facts • growing learning in human settings and not just mechanically building knowledge • collaboration, ambiguity, interaction, dependence and interdependence being the norm • learning becoming a collective effort of understanding with members valued for their diverse contributions and where it is not necessary that each member assimilate everything that the community knows (see Learning communities, p. 19) • spirituality in the sense of seeking meaning and purpose beyond materialism and self-interest • a more integrated and respectful relationship between humans and the natural world • more responsive, flexible and complex institutions with decisions being taken at all levels within them • living comfortably with many different points of view. We need to remember that the very same skills of separation, analysis and control that have given us the power to shape our environment are producing ecological and social crises in our outer world, psychological and spiritual crises in our inner world and an unproductive simplicity in our schools. If we move away from the primacy of parts thinking to a more holistic way that tries to put the pieces together, the result is not a new comprehensive school that will be appropriate for all students and all communities. Rather, we end up with a variety of schools, some of which may not even


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resemble what we call a school today. Together these different schools would meet the many needs of our community.

School obesity Are we missing the point about school obesity? So far I have only read about overweight students, their unhealthy food, their minimal exercise and how school tuckshops let them down by selling the wrong foods. Then there is the poor dietary role modelling that some of our teachers and parents provide for students. After all, young people are not only seeing adults indulge, but are buying and using what adults have prepared for them. Add to this the further complication of the overprotective parent who is worried that it might rain (literally and figuratively), so their child cannot participate in sport or other healthy, challenging activities. No wonder we have an obesity issue! But there is another, hidden challenge that schools have not addressed: it is obesity in the institution itself. Have schools developed unhealthy habits too? Are we demanding attractive, sugar-coated and over-salted foods like extravagant facilities, irrelevant programs and unnecessary staff? Have schools been slowed down by this excessive weight and have their arteries been clogged by the fatty cholesterol of material goods generated by unrealistic community demands? I can already hear the chorus of protests: ‘Schools are not fat with excessive riches. It is corporations that are obese!’ The schools’ fingers are pointed at companies where there are executive perks, like restaurant meals, corporate boxes, excessive salaries, lavish directors’ bonuses and tax minimisation schemes. It is true that corporate excesses do not exist in schools. Yet schools are succumbing to the painful, contagious and socially transmitted condition of affluenza. Affluenza is ‘the bloated, sluggish and unfulfilled feeling that results from efforts to keep up with the Joneses’ (Hamilton & Denniss 2005, p. 3). Australia has been infected with this growing and unhealthy preoccupation with money and material things. It is argued that materialism and its attendant self-absorption is having a devastating effect on family life as parents work longer hours to buy things they don’t really need. Hamilton and Denniss note that: in the community there is a widespread belief that the values of the market – individualism, selfishness, materialism, competition – are driving out the more desirable values of trust, self-restraint, mutual respect and generosity. (2005, p. 217)


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Eckersley (1998), in a disturbing article, asserts: The belief that material progress equates with a better life is so ingrained in our culture we are overlooking the importance of other factors – in particular, the personal, social and spiritual relationships that give our lives a moral texture and a sense of meaning – of self-worth, of belonging, identity, purpose and hope. (p. 10)

Consider school facilities: there are many new, whole-school complexes being built for the same price that others are paying just for a drama auditorium, a gymnasium with pool or a music school. Of course, I would never deny young people good facilities and I wish all students had full access to the stimulating and challenging activities that need specialised facilities to be delivered. However, I would argue that good facilities do not necessarily deliver a good education or create a good school. Too many schools are focusing on this one aspect, risking getting fat and missing the point of education—the development of the person and of the learning community. But the fat is not just in facilities, it is in programs and how they are delivered. When students learn so much of what they find useful outside the classroom, why do we continue to believe that students only learn when they have a teacher? Could we slim down our curriculum delivery by looking at other delivery modes? We make little use of student initiative for selfdirected learning, peer teaching, community resources or the networked society in our pedagogy or curriculum. We constantly need to challenge our mind sets and break old habits. Our affluenza shows in our values too. We stress what schools give to students, not what students can give to the school, their peers or the community. We need to move from the acquisitiveness of affluenza to an altruistic orientation, from wanting to giving, and to valuing our community and not just ourselves. Just like selling the wrong foods in the tuckshop, we do not want to sell inappropriate values to our children. There is an old joke that asks ‘How do you get rid of eight pounds of ugly fat?’ The answer is ‘Cut off your head!’ We laugh at that, but no one truly believes a headless person is a solution to excess fat, although we may be tempted to go for the quick fix! Removing all adults from the school would be no true solution either to school obesity. A school cannot manage without adults as effective role models in thinking, learning and acting. But it does need to be creative in finding new solutions. We are told we need to address the obesity epidemic by increasing activity, monitoring our intake and improving social support—perhaps we need to do exactly the same to prevent obese schools.


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Notschool.net After a lifetime in schools, I am aware of the strengths and weaknesses of these institutions. I worked within schools to change them and together with fellow teachers and administrators made some significant changes to the way they functioned. But in the end, the schools in which I worked remain recognisable as schools. It is hard to believe that in the last 100 years we have created the perfect learning setting, the institutional school that we have today. Today, technology provides us with new opportunities for alternative structures and ways of organising young people. One area with promise is online learning. Early attempts at e-learning have contributed little, but the possibilities for the future do seem great. In Electronic community (p. 21) I distinguished between a learning community and a community of learners. I stressed the value of the learning that occurred when individuals who had a common goal of learning were linked in an online community as a community of learners, and contrasted it with the content-centric learning that is being delivered online to individ uals within a learning community such as a school. Let me introduce you to a community where the emphasis is not so much on the teacher delivering content, but on teachers creating opportunities for individual learners to use online opportunities to meet, share and, in the course of this, extend their knowledge. The cyber learning setting is known as Notschool.net and it exists in the UK. Here students do not physically attend a school, but they are part of a community of learners. Not a school (Notschool.net 2006) was established by Ultralab and the Department for Education and Skills (DfES), not to offer an alternative to students in existing schools, but to bring back into the learning fold those who were excluded or were excluding themselves from traditional school and alternatives, such as home tutoring. So the students in Notschool.net are phobic, ill, disaffected, pregnant or excluded. The Notschool.net ethos is one of mutual self-respect in a blame-free environment. The key to student engagement is participation in an online environment. There is a commitment by staff to making learning relevant and fun. While the institutional school was the model for Notschool.net, an attempt was made to remove the ‘school’ rhetoric, structure and strictures, which included creating new terminology. The students would not talk to people with the titles of teachers or tutors and so new titles had to be found. As a result, Notschool.net consists of researchers, mentors, buddies and experts. The students are called researchers, teachers are called mentors, and buddies are young undergraduate university students there to befriend the researchers. The experts are drawn from places outside of schools such as the BBC and the Science Museum, and they provide subject-based content.


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Care and management structures for the students remain a priority. Each mentor is responsible for six researchers. These mentors do not necessarily meet their allocated researchers; indeed, it was found that researchers engaged more quickly without face-to-face meetings. Some very successful mentors never met their researchers and no clear link was found between face-to-face meetings and successful mentor–researcher relationships. But face-to-face meetings did occur after researchers began to trust their mentors online. Once this trust was established, the researchers began to seek opportunities for social activity. Expert days provided opportunities for researchers to meet face-to-face, as well as a chance for them to meet experts, mentors and IT technicians. These days were useful, too, for reengaging, supporting and training researchers. The researchers were provided with good technical equipment including a computer, Internet access and multimedia software. As a result, sound, animation and graphics were widely used by the researchers. Monitoring of the engagement and learning levels of this vulnerable group of young people was seen to be critical. Monitoring established whether learning was taking place or whether intervention was needed. The expectation was that each researcher would achieve some learning and the evidence for this was being involved in some activity during the course of the week. Learning was not seen necessarily as synonymous with time logged on, but it was an indicator. Safety of the young people was also important and so access to the community was limited to only those who were part of the Notschool.net. So, unfortunately, I could not meet the students face-to-face, but I was able to visit the management centre and read research reports on the progress of Notschool.net. The workspace for the researchers was a homepage, which they were encouraged to develop. Researchers were particularly interested in the homepages of fellow researchers and these homepages were often the starting point for researchers after logging-on and checking their email. It was also an important source of inspiration and learning for them. One student wrote to another student: Hi David … I like your moving text. I got the html for flashing text from George … you can have it if you want … Can you tell me the move html please … Steve

The success of the community extended to the mentors. One reported: ‘I never in a million years thought that Internet teaching could be so rewarding … I’m hooked.’


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I was impressed with what Notschool.net has been able to achieve. While Notschool.net breaks new ground, introducing some radical ways of meeting and relating, it is still in concept a school. It is another kaleidoscope image with the same set pieces being moved, giving a new image but not a substantially new picture. It is creative and successful, but we need to go further.

Experiment Notschool.net was a successful experiment using new technology to bring previously excluded students back into the learning fold. We need more experimentation to help alienated students obtain more value from their schooling, to find better ways to address some of the social ills in our society and to plan for a better future. But what is to be the nature of this experimentation? The age-old method of learning has been to observe passively, so as not to disturb nature, generalise from what was observed and test by prediction. This is what we have been doing in schools for some time and it has led to incremental improvements in curriculum and pedagogy. Alongside passive observation, there has been the equally ancient (experimental) method of probing to disturb nature and learning from the reaction. Here you can create not only controlled conditions, but conditions that would not normally appear. In this way, you pass from knowledge of what is merely actual and that is going to happen anyway given present conditions, to knowledge of what is possible. Given enough information about what is possible, we can choose what to make happen by manipulating initial conditions. So we obtain a big increase in the options open to us. An example of this is Notschool.net (see Notschool.net, p. 71). Another example is the residential program at Marshmead and at Clunes (see Alternative structures, p. 54). And there is a further increase in options when we move to the third method of designed possibility. Here the goal is to make possible what is not natural but which becomes possible within a deliberately designed system. Using such a system, we have obtained, for example, special purpose plastics with the tensile strength of steel. Can we do the same for learning by looking to the new technologies such as games? It would be fair to assume that the future belongs to those who have been able to grasp the shift from the past (observation and reaction) to the future (possibility and design). It is imperative that we understand the possibilities inherent in our new technologies and design a viable school for our future. Similarly, we need to understand the possibilities inherent in our multiculturalism and


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social institutions, and design a viable societal future for ourselves. Our world is increasingly complex and the consequences of action are increasingly large, whether for good or ill. If we cannot as a species master the process of transforming complexity into possibility, from there to design a viable future, then we shall simply be overwhelmed by it … Incremental changes in existing designs to produce incremental improvements are only shallowly innovative. Deep innovation changes the designs themselves so as to realise new possibilities. Deep innovation is made possible, and necessary, by possession of the possibility/design method. An adequate future for us must be deeply innovative. (Hooker 1994, p. 5)

Most experimentation in schools is focused on knowledge development and the new possibilities arising from the latest technology. But is knowledge our exclusive goal? As history has demonstrated, knowledge can be used to destroy as well as to save; our students need the ethical wisdom to use this knowledge. Surely for educators the issue is not knowledge above all else, yet that is how we allocate our time to subjects, content and knowledge exams. Very few schools have been willing to say that values education is as important as curriculum knowledge, that valuable social and personal experiences are to be part of content communication, or that the school prospectus will proclaim graduates who are serving the community in what may be perceived as menial ways. I remember well the outrage from some teachers when I proposed closing down academic classes in Year 9 for a whole term and allocating this time to personal and social development. I was forced to argue that to do so would lead to better academic outcomes because the students would be more mature. But academic performance was not my goal for this new program. What I wanted was an induction of young people into our society; a new rite of passage for them that would not be designed by Hollywood. In short, I wanted to give proper attention for at least eight weeks (and how short even that is) to the education of the whole person. The fact that I was allowed to interrupt the school program may not so much reflect the plausibility and benefit of the above argument, as much as the fact that I was taking those students who were the most alienated from the academic program (and the most disruptive) out of school! We need school experiments that acknowledge that learning is about values, community and feelings. It is all too easy to get caught up in the engrossing pursuit of academic knowledge or, for that matter, selfish pursuits of entrance to certain university faculties rather than thinking about others and the greater community. Schools are even rewarded when their students


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achieve good knowledge outcomes such as high marks and university entrance. Yet there seem to be no rewards for the schools that help their students to achieve personal maturity or outstanding community outcomes. While I may be best known as the principal who (with my staff) experimented with personal computing, requiring all students to have a notebook computer in 1990, I regard my greatest experimental achievement (again with my staff) as the introduction of in-your-face community to Year 9 students. The computing led to knowledge and gave more control of the learning back to students, but the community experiment was to build wisdom—a proper union of heart and head. There is a bigger picture here and it is not pure knowledge or selfish gain. A focus on people and human values is just as critical as a development of the intellect. And if we are to move forward as a community, we need to be experimenting, seeking deep innovation in order to design a viable future for schools and society. What should our monuments be? Will they reflect our human aspirations or our acquisitive ones?

Dare we allow schools to be different? I have always been a critic of look-alike Australian schools offering averaged mediocrity in education. I have never believed that the education desired by professional or upwardly mobile people is the same as is wanted by working class, unemployed or rural communities. Nor have I believed that students, even from the one family, want the same education as each other. Our one-size-fits-all schools are not the answer. I am not arguing for a lower standard for one group over another. Rather, I am asserting that what interests and is relevant to one individual or group will be different to what is appropriate for another. Different curriculum does not have to mean different standards, but a different curriculum will make it harder for those who attempt to rate all students on some continuum. But how valid are the present measurements that give a score of between 1 and 100 to all students? In criticising our comprehensive schools I am not saying that we cannot have a core curriculum for all students. To the contrary, not to achieve minimum standards of literacy, numeracy, technology and personal skills is to fail students and that is the greatest cause of inequality in Australian society. But there is a world of difference between a minimum, common, core curriculum and a commitment to all schools offering the same curriculum within a similar culture. Australia committed itself to comprehensive schools in order to achieve equality of opportunity. Such dedication to equality is laudable. But the fear


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of difference that Australians bring to this quest is detrimental to individuals and to society. To me, a strength that we have as Australians is our multicultural composition. While there is general agreement in our community that diversity is richness when we are talking about restaurants, there is not the same positive feeling about differences when it comes to culture, customs and different schools. Australians resist change and, consequently, vociferously oppose any differences in school practice. Surprisingly, this fear is found even among those who acknowledge that our present school system is failing too many students. Australia has not been alone in this commitment to sameness and mediocrity. The UK has pursued a policy of universal comprehensive schooling believing that this would be the only guarantee of delivering equality. Their motivation for creating sameness was their fear of elitism. And if we are talking about the UK’s previous system of grammar schools versus secondary moderns, with access determined by exams at 11 years of age, then the criticism is justified. In such a stratified system, there were those students who made it and those who had failed before even commencing their secondary schooling. But the Labour government of the UK argued that equality would only be achieved when schools were set free and allowed to be different. They argued that by allowing schools to choose a speciality this would increase the motivation and performance of teachers and students, not just in the speciality but also across the rest of the curriculum. The Prime Minister (Blair 2002) stated: The evidence is clear that it [speciality status] serves as a whole-school improvement strategy … Schools that do well are the schools with a distinctive ethos, effective leadership, flexibility in working and adapting to change … And the more choice there is for parents, the more pressure for change and improvement in the system … excellence is not the enemy of equality but ultimately its instrument.

The UK Labour government sought excellence and equality by encouraging differences in schools. They now believe that sufficient evidence exists from student and school failure that existing comprehensive schools are not delivering for all. What they want is school initiative, variety and relevance in offerings and the quality that they believe follows when schools are set free to specialise. And there is something else for Australians to imitate from the UK. To achieve change, the UK Labour government has invested six per cent over and above inflation in education. We do have some specialist schools in Australia. We have schools that have built up a good reputation for music, languages, technology or sport.


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But these are the exception and some ideologues see them as an aberration in the system. Let us not just tolerate but praise these specialist schools and encourage the look-alikes to differentiate themselves. Students are not all of the same ability. Nor do students and their parents have the same interests. Nor is equality delivered by uniformity of experience. But there is evidence that uniformity may be creating inequality because we still have students rejecting schooling and failing at school. So let us show maturity as a community and not impose, through fear of difference, a boring uniformity of school offering. Let us create many different schools where students and their interests are nurtured and extended.

Curriculum and school makeovers:Mary Mason Changing times call for radical solutions Schools are concerned about the continuity of the curriculum in classrooms as students go off for their weeks in the city, geography excursions, outdoor education experiences, music lessons, sports matches, skiing, situated learning programs and special projects. These are all very worthwhile experiences, but lead to students missing lessons at school. And for a moderate number of those students there is a loss to learning because they thrive in a classroom. In short, research shows that time on task leads to better learning for students and yet, increasingly, this class time at schools is fragmented by other worthwhile learning experiences. Often, however, the assumption of teachers back at school is that the real learning goes on in the classroom and these other experiences are a holiday for the students! There is then a problem of connection between the two types of experience and yet the authenticity of the learning in the one and the opportunity to consolidate in the other are complementary. How do we solve this conflict between two different curriculum approaches? I believe the first step is to create a curriculum model where units can be taught at any time in any place either virtually or in real-time and can connect with each other. That requires a radical change to the curriculum writing that exists in schools now.

Where to from here and why? Let me state at the outset that curriculum documentation is important. It is the only way we can ensure the building of student understanding over time. But if we want to embrace school reform, the model has to change. Recognising this, we have embarked on a new curriculum project in our school. The path we took was guided by the Project Zero Framework (Wiske 1997), developed initially by Howard Gardner and David Perkins. It was also influenced by the work of Allan Luke (2004) in Queensland in


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the New Basics. Our overall framework is the same for all subjects. It is available electronically and is searchable by teachers online—and we hope parents and students in the future. It is connected to unit planners and resources. It focuses on purposes, knowledge, methods and performances of each subject discipline. Our curriculum documentation allows teachers to teach the curriculum either virtually, face-to-face or in the community, because it is conceptual rather than content dependent. Our initial task was to reconceptualise the notion of curriculum so that teachers did not revert to their own content-driven, bottom-drawer curriculum, mental models, which many of them ignored. To some extent we have succeeded—this is an ongoing process! The problem with past curriculum is its artificiality. It is divorced from the ways of thinking and doing that a mathematician, environmentalist or historian, for example, would use in the real world. We started by asking teachers in their subject discipline areas to develop throughlines for their subject disciplines from P–12. We asked the following questions: how does an expert mathematician, historian, literary critic, writer, scientist and so on, think? What do they need to know? What kinds of language systems and genres do they use to articulate their thinking and writing? What kinds of performances do they achieve? And, above all, what are the purposes and uses of their discipline areas? These might seem obvious questions but teachers initially found them difficult to answer. It was not that they did not know, but their knowledge was tacit. It was only through questioning that teachers were able to articulate the knowledge and practices of their subjects. These are some extracts from the throughlines that teachers developed for mathematics as they were discussed and refined: What is an understanding of mathematics? To operate autonomously, a mathematician needs to discuss, present, justify, prove, consider applications in a wider context, and consider applicability, elegance and ethics. Among the purposes were: • a search for patterns and relationships • a way of thinking characterised by a wide variety of processes • a powerful, precise and concise means of communication • a creative activity involving invention, intuition and discovery. Symbol systems that mathematicians use include: maps, graphs, lgebraic symbols, operators, logical connectors, base systems, numeraa tion systems, units of measure, algorithms and setting out of protocols. The thinking methodologies mathematicians use include: metacognition, repetition and practice, building a toolbox of strategies, making connections to prior learning, drawing diagrams, using systemic lists,


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eliminating possibilities, using a matrix logic, looking for patterns, guessing and checking, asking yourself questions, breaking problems into subproblems, working backwards and changing the representation.

Teachers in each subject area then wrote a number of curriculum units for each year level under their throughline umbrella. They cut the number of units down—less is more—and each curriculum map sought to articulate precisely what big questions needed to be addressed in that unit, what concepts and knowledge students needed to grasp, what language it was important to know, and what thinking processes and skills were important to be able to do. These were then linked to learning standards, written by the teachers for each area of study and based on a generic standard developed in the school, which focused on higher-order thinking and teaching for understanding. These units were linked spirally across the years. From these curriculum maps, teacher teams or individual teachers generated learning plans that enabled students to grasp the conceptual framework. In this process, teachers needed to realise that students had to be able to tinker and speculate, receive direct instruction at appropriate moments, make decisions, fail and receive feedback (Brunner & Tally 1999). Scaffolded by the teachers, the students do the work. This is not an effortless road. And we have a long way yet to travel. It would be easier to say ‘we’ll do linear equations’, but if we want students to master the discourse of the subject, we cannot tell it to students; we need to design curriculum that centres on both the subject and the learning needs of those different students. This brings me to the strengths of this curriculum model. It is versatile. Teachers can design a unit on painting in the classroom, they can spend a week at the Arthur Boyd homestead focusing on painting, or they can take the students to Melbourne for an urban experience and use the time to visit art galleries and work on painting assisted by artists. They can do these different things from the same curriculum map because it is structured conceptually rather than around content and they can enrich it with the content of the different experiences. Here is what two of our students said about their painting time in the city: n Learning for myself and by myself. When painting my individual project,

I learnt how much paint to use and mix, what colours to use, etc. And how we have learnt—not just being told, but getting out there and learning for yourself. Hands on experience was a lot better. n I have learnt so many things! First of all I learnt how to take a tram! I also learnt how much art is all around the Melbourne city. I got the chance to view some of the … amazing sculptures and the Man Ray exhibition. I also learnt heaps about art itself—how to use technical


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names, what it means and how to use it myself to the highest potential! I mean I hardly knew what texture was before this! The context of the situation gave these students independence and a familiarisation with the discipline of painting within the context of the city. When the curriculum is conceptual, specific applications of that curriculum generated by teachers are infinite. The learning style, the processing style and the interests of the students can be linked to other contexts besides the classroom. It may sound idealistic, but to realise the dream requires rad ical changes to the way schools are managed: their timetables, their staffing, their connection to outside communities and even their role. It requires a rejigging of where the money in education is spent. Schools themselves recognise that the young people of today require a different education; hence, the burgeoning of new ventures, for example, the Art in the City program in my own school. However, what many schools are trying to do at the moment is to fit a new look curriculum into the old organisational model. This creates discontinuities in the curriculum, instead of exploiting the energy and authenticity of community, virtual and global learning. More radical would be to design a new organisational model. If we were to do that, it might have the following characteristics: • A curriculum that builds from year to year, is rigorous and based around the disciplines • Generative topics that are differentiated and centred on the students’ learning styles, interests and abilities. It can happen in any place, virtual or real • A staffing mix composed of teachers, writers, journalists, scientists, meteorologists, artists, actors and so on • A program in which each student has a mentor who helps them manage their learning, build their timetable and track their progress online • Centres of excellence in the school for all the discipline areas. Physical spaces would include studios, small rooms and classrooms, as well as technology • A range of learning experiences, some structured formally, some project work time, some situated experiences and some virtual experiences—or a mixture of any of the above • Networks developed to like and un-like communities, in order to utilise a variety of ways to deliver its program • A day and a year that might see teachers take different holidays and work different hours during the day. Some of the learning programs may take place in the evening. It would be an adventurous school that would take on this challenge!


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Family schooling While traditional schooling has had an obvious social benefit, this has been at a significant social cost. Unlike earlier cultures, society has unintentionally restricted our children through formal schooling. Their contact is limited with the larger social world, just at the time when they are developmentally ready and needing to learn about it—institutionalising an extended childhood. Research and common sense remind us that the home and the local community are critical, and often neglected, elements in achieving good educational outcomes. While schools know that the social environment of the learner is important—for example, educational outcomes in deprived areas are worse than those in non-deprived areas—schools have chosen to keep the focus inward on themselves, rather than on the community. A cartoon I remember reading showed a baffled student standing in front of a computer expert who explained: ‘We take your final year test results, compare it to your peers and past results, and get … the market value of your parents’ home.’ While this may be amusing, it is also very close to the truth. The research evidence is clear; if we want to improve student outcomes—both academic and social—more emphasis needs to be placed on the student’s home and community. Today we could consider re-integrating formal education with family, the community and its economic components. School education could take advantage of multiple groups and sites in the community as focus for learning, and communication could extend around the world. We no longer have to be constrained by the class structure; learning can occur in groups of 1, 5 or 90, depending on context. Nor are there grounds for rigidly fragmenting learning by subject—there are no significant human questions and problems that can be resolved within a single discipline. The addition of technology to schools may not improve students’ school experience, as it can be implemented, paradoxically, to close down thinking and aspirations. We need a more diverse, more communally integrated education process, held together by teachers, electronic interaction, families and community. It will be worse than useless if we use today’s knowledge and resources to reinforce yesterday’s society and education. But can schools change to accommodate this broader focus? For too long schools have guarded their turf, what happens in the school and turned a blind eye to what has been happening outside. In fairness, schools do not have the staff resources to have teachers visit homes, create community support such as meals at school, social workers for the home, or community building activities and run these programs for 52 weeks. But schools do have the voice to speak out for reform, arguing for significant change in how we conceptualise schools and define the work of school staff.


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There are too many forces working to maintain the present culture: written statements about the organisation’s mission and philosophy; the design of physical spaces and buildings; the dominant leadership pattern; past selection practices; entrenched rituals; popular stories about key people and events; the performance evaluation and reward criteria; and the formal structure of school and society. The task of unlearning years of experiences and memories is difficult and could take a long time to achieve. The effectiveness of any school depends on how closely that school can align its aims with those of the families it serves. Schools, homes and the community need to work together in ways not yet achieved. Schools need to engage the community, inviting their participation in the process by ‘communicating that you are able, valuable and responsible’ (Fink 2005, p. 43). To simply project the present school paradigm into the future is to perpetuate an unfair and unsustainable society. Let us remember that all students matter, not just the rich or the successful, and they matter because they are people and not just units in an economy or statistics in a review.

From public/private to community schools The debate about public (owned, funded and operated by government) versus private schools is one that divides our community. Is the debate to continue to be binary or is there a possible third way, that of community schools? Is the debate only about funding or is it about values and outcomes? I have lived with this emotional binary debate too closely and for too long. It has interfered with friendships and dominated my profess ional life. These debates are often personal, arising not in the media, but from friends and the important communities in which I live. The most recent was in a religious community where I was seeking communion. Some community members had wished to set up a school that would reflect their values. But then who was to pay for it became an issue; some members feared that, if established, it would end up being an exclusive school for the rich. This debate captured the idealism that has led to the establishment of many schools, but it also highlighted the reality that the user pays principle on which it would need to be funded means that open access to all students is not really possible, given current government funding arrangements. Equity and quality are the more fundamental elements of the current debate, but we seem to be stuck on debating issues of ownership, management and funding. The public/private debate for many people comes down to how schools are to be funded.


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The unfortunate truth is that there is no equitable way of funding existing schools. All known methods are flawed and that is why there is so much ammunition for a fight. Each side can see the faults in the other’s arguments, but neither side is willing to admit to the inconsistencies in their own position. Both private and public schools want more money and the politicians are telling us that there is no more. So the obvious place to get the additional funds is from the other. Consider the alternatives. The utopian solution is to fund all schools to the standard of the very best. This would be an expensive proposition and we are unlikely to find any political party willing to do this, even though our children deserve it. And, of course, there is the problem of how to bring all schools up to one standard and an even larger challenge to agree on what that standard might be! We could define a middle position and require all schools to adhere to this. But this would mean forcing successful schools to lower their standards and thus lowering community aspirations to mediocrity. As well as causing social disruption, the ensuing lower standards would impact negatively on Australia both economically and socially, as we are not an isolated state but a member of an interconnected world economy. As a result, we are left with unequal schools and I am not just referring to the divide between public and private. There is inequality within both the public and the private sectors. We have public and private schools that are relatively rich in facilities, qualities of programs and in personnel. But we also have some poor public and private schools. These are usually in deprived areas. Government responses to these inequities have been bureaucratic in nature. They identify deprived schools and give them more money, and they introduce targets for all schools and demand accountability from those who run underperforming schools. These measures may help, but will not solve the inequity that exists. Other government options include offering vouchers to parents that they may cash in at any school that they wish. But vouchers are not fair either, as they favour those parents with additional money and those in certain geographical regions. As well, there is the assumption that a competitive business model will deliver better schools and I am not convinced about this. Then there is the current socioeconomic status funding model that is being applied to private schools. This model has some merit in that it relates to the economic circumstances of those being educated, but it still leaves the students in unequal schools. But the argument is not just about money. Private can also mean that the school has a political or religious bias. With world religious issues to the fore at present, there is concern about Australian unity and there has been a


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return to an old idea that social unity is best achieved by having all students attend local public schools. The public/private debate masks the underlying issues of unclarified values. For a school to be truly public, it is not who is providing the education that is the issue, so much as whether the providers ascribe to a certain set of public values. Caldwell identifies six such core values that need to be achieved: choice, equity, access, efficiency, economic growth and harmony (2002, p. 823). There is no reason why we need to have governments running the schools in order to achieve these public values. And there can be multiple delivery systems, not a standard one. We should be ensuring that these six values (and possibly more) are being achieved and not get stuck in the simplistic public versus private debate. But there is some fresh thinking looking for the middle ground. Caldwell (2006, pp. 41–4) argues a case for a new synergy across the public and private sectors. He believes that by failing to achieve this all schools will be denied the support that they need. He nominates five arguments for change: • The failure of the present system to deliver on community expectations • To secure more funds such as through public–private partnerships • A third way that looks for public good rather than public delivery, an outcomes rather than an inputs focus • Building of social capital by securing a wider basis of support for schools, both intellectually and socially • The needs of a knowledge society. However, I want to be more radical and take these arguments further. I neither desire to see governments running schools nor market forces dominating the scene. I am looking to break out of this mould with some kind of community schools. For too long the public school has been synonymous with the government-owned and run school. Community and government are rarely the same. And market forces is a business model that does not have a commitment to equity. Consider the issues that need to be addressed. After funding, other issues can be grouped as follows: • Inputs (more teachers, better facilities) • Outputs (quality of person, economic growth, test results) • Means (only government should run schools or leave it to market forces). There seems abundant evidence to show that a focus on inputs or outputs alone does not deliver. And who delivers the education is only important as it affects outcomes and values. Therefore, we need to be clear about two things:


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1. The ends that are sought 2. The values that should underpin the achievement of those ends. Perhaps the answer does not lie in finding new resource allocation models to fund existing schools. A more basic question that needs to be asked is: ‘Should schools exist as they do today?’ Isn’t it time that we began to move away from the idea of taking students out of community life to an island school where students are supposed to learn in the abstract before they cross the drawbridge back to real life? Today we make some concessions for reality: we have out-of-school excursions and experiences. But is this enough? We invite parents into the school and offer them some small say in what is happening, but not any say on the curriculum. This is lip service to the idea of community education and family schooling. Hard-wired into our heads is the belief that institutions are the answer. Well why not, you may ask, because they have been the cornerstones of our society for centuries. Schools have been where you found teachers, you went to banks to deposit and withdraw funds, hospitals have been where you found doctors and locked psychiatric centres were where the mentally ill were cared for. And these institutions have done a reasonably good job. But they have become expensive and they are not reaching all their constituents. In recent years people have changed more than the institutions that support them … what we are just beginning to witness in response to this is a tidal shift in how institutions relate to the people they serve … services will need to be configured around the needs of the individual, not a supposedly homogeneous mass. (Hannon 2004, p. 304)

Today banking, teachers and resources for learning can be found online, day surgeries are expanding, the elderly are being supported in their homes and the mentally ill are integrated back into the community. It is interesting to see how iconic community buildings have lost their past significance and been transformed into something new. On a visit to Sydney I saw how the beautiful Sydney General Post Office is now a hotel, some of the powerful banks are now commercial centres and even Pitt Street has become a retail mall and not a thoroughfare. Could it be that in the future our well-equipped private schools may become Club Med resorts? Surely it is time to ask some more fundamental questions about how we induct young people into our twenty-first century living. Do we dare to try some experimental new alternatives rather than buttress old divisive ways?


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A civic structure If we listen to the radio talkback sessions, we know that our fellow citizens are not afraid to discuss their rights. Why should we pay higher taxes? Why isn’t school free? But there is less discussion of responsibilities on the airwaves. How can we contribute to better schooling? Change can only come by seeking new patterns of dynamic connection and interaction within our society and the school is a good place from which to explore and demonstrate this, theoretically and practically. I would like to discuss this first by looking at how the school fits within society and then by looking at the education of tomorrow’s citizens within those schools. One possible way of connecting individuals and groups within society is suggested by an equilateral triangle. At one apex is the government setting directions, nominating outcomes, providing incentives and safeguards to expand individual and corporate responsibility, and providing a safety net. At another are the commercial institutions operating dynamically in response to market forces. At the third apex is the civic; citizens and their voluntary associations working for the larger good. Tony Blair (2002) has suggested that we need to move away both from an exclusive reliance on government and an exclusive reliance on the market. He suggests that there is a third way, neither ideologically left nor right, which would have a basis in core individual and community values with a focus on outcomes. He wants to unleash this community power and the attendant possibilities of partnerships between public, businesses, the non-profit sector and private individuals. For schools, such freeing and encouraging of the civic or third force would mean not just more money for schooling, but importantly ‘a wider and deeper base of support for schools’ would be developed (Caldwell 2006, p. 42). Caldwell refers to this as building social capital that will lead to people working together for the common good. Social capital is about building positive community attitudes and values, encouraging cooperation within society and encouraging reciprocity among its members. There are not-for-profit organisations successfully bridging the different sectors now in Australia. For example in 2004, according to their PR department, Opera Australia derived 26 per cent of its funding from government, 11 per cent from the community and 63 per cent from ticket sales. We also have commercial companies encouraging their employees to give of their time to people in need by releasing them from work to undertake community service. Some organisations actively recognise the out-of-work contributions of their staff when considering promotions within the company.


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But at present, we don’t have much help from the Australian government for this. What we need is for a sympathetic and fair legal structure that recognises the particular needs and problems of not-for-profit agencies and an economic framework that provides incentives and rewards—such as tax incentives for individuals and corporations who undertake civic work without financial reward for the greater good of the community (Hargreaves 1998, p. 65). Community-minded schools are showing the way, providing opportunities for students to involve themselves in community life by volunteer work in social agencies that are caring for others. In the International Baccalaureate there is a compulsory social services unit, Creativity, Action and Service, that needs to be achieved before students can graduate. Given today’s renewed interest in values in education, this practical involvement in community service by students, and the subsequent guided student reflections, offers a good entry point for such studies. Some will argue against schools involving themselves in community service, believing that it allows unequal practices in society to continue— offering charity to the unlucky ones. As long ago as 1912, Rebecca West, in The Clarion, was critical of charity: ‘Unless it is accompanied by sincere revolt against the present social system, it [charity] is cheap moral swagger.’ Yes, the ultimate goal is a just and sustainable society, one where there is a more equal distribution of wealth and services. But this does not mean that charity relief cannot be offered in the interim. ‘Social service’ needs some definition. It is not just about raising $100 for the needy. Nor is it paternalism. It is about relating, linking and supporting others in a significant way at the deepest possible personal level and, in the process, being personally challenged to consider ways to improve our society. School students are full of idealism and this should be harnessed and directed. Having extracted students from their families and workers from their homes, it is time for us to reconsider whether the industrial model of an efficient, functionally separated society is delivering the society of our choice. We have an opportunity and a responsibility in our schools to rebuild community, to model a new way that provides connection between community members, encourages and supports personal responsibility for helping others and contributes to the establishment of a new ethical base for our society. We also need to look at community structures. I can remember the cultural shock as an Australian, becoming a teacher in Canada and being asked by my new school employer whether I would like to donate a half a per cent of my salary to a community fund to support others. My first question was: ‘Doesn’t the government do this?’ Here was my first challenge to


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the way that I, as an Australian, saw the world. I did volunteer to donate my half per cent, I did take an interest in the different community agencies that received this money, and I think that I was a more informed and responsible community member as a result. ‘From those to whom much is given, much is required’ might therefore be a more fruitful civic call to action than the one espoused by those supporting market forces, ‘What is in this for me?’ or the centralist’s ‘Leave it to government, that is why we pay taxes!’


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Schools: A cultural perspective

3

Life is not a stable state. It is a rhythm, an unending search, a succession of choices, even a succession of new births. (Tournier 1957, p. 218)

Schools are not impersonal factories but human institutions with a life and wellbeing to be considered. Disentangling the good from the bad in current schooling is critical. We must continue our search for something better, acknowledging that there are always choices and that there will be many new beginnings ahead of us. To achieve this we may even have to take to the streets! (See Polity and schools, p. 112.) In Part 3, the focus is on culture, ‘a relatively rigid tacit infrastructure of ideas’ (Gurteen 1999, p. 1). Culture shapes both our thinking and our behaviour. In a school, as in any organisation, there are a number of forces at work to maintain its present culture. These would include: written statements about the organisation’s mission and philosophy; the design of physical spaces and buildings; the organisation’s formal structure; the leadership pattern; past staff and student selection practices; entrenched rituals, particularly in relation to communication patterns; popular stories about key people and events; the organisation’s history; and the evaluation and reward criteria employed. These all need to be addressed if change is to be achieved. Culture is theoretically amenable to change. For schools and their staff, the task of unlearning years of experiences and memories is difficult. 89


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However, we must try and one of the places to begin is with teachers. Teachers are the key to cultural change. The first joust, Trust me, I am a teacher (p. 91), argues that there is not really a culture of trust among teachers; teachers are more concerned with solidarity than with encouraging critical feedback, surfacing conflict and supervising each other. A sharing culture (p. 97) argues that school cultures should be changed by connecting people and thus enabling the sharing of experience and informal mentoring. Its potential for professional development is greater than from formal courses. It is also important that schools learn to reconceptualise their culture, so that they are not confronting places but mutually supportive places. Finding your voice and allowing other voices in decision making is important for each individual and their feelings of self-worth. But it is also a critical mission for any organisation where alternative scenarios are considered and explored. This is discussed in An open culture (p. 99). And work needs to be done with those training to be teachers, as they have preconceived ideas of what happens in schools and how teachers operate. These people who aspire to teaching were mostly successful students who have enjoyed their experience of school. What do they know about students who are disengaged with school? In New teachers, new teaching (p. 93), Amanda McGraw describes what is being done to assist these student teachers to connect in new and innovative ways with individuals and with communities. It is important that there is some alignment in values between those employed and the employing organisation. A values-based culture (p. 106) makes a plea for schools to move beyond helping students with values clarification; the more pressing task is to help staff, including the leadership team, with their values clarification. A firm values framework is at the heart of good decision making and job satisfaction. And if staff members are unhappy in what is perceived to be an unfriendly or unhealthy culture, they always have the option to leave it. In Managing ourselves (p. 101), adults are invited to emulate the young generation by adopting the mind set that goes with the active digital culture, thereby achieving an independence of mind and a new social structure. Culture impacts on students and this needs to be explored. Large groups of people aren’t our normal experience of life and yet they are the primary experience we give to school students. For most students this method is not useful as it fosters dependency and stifles initiative. So, in Hands up, please! (p. 95) the student culture of dependency is explored, together with its consequences in later adult life. Moving beyond dependency to taking responsibility for not only oneself but for others is what our society urgently needs. Our young people need a more open culture in which they can be active, independent, purposeful learners working both individually and


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collaboratively. In Locked in (p. 111) there is encouragement to discard the one-size-fits-all approach to schooling, given the social complexity of our society and the wide range of abilities and interests of students. Unfortunately, governments and systems, with their desire for administrative uniformity, are restricting schools, limiting opportunities for more personalised learning. And in Punishment or reform? (p. 103) there is encouragement to build a culture based not on punishment if you do not conform, but on institutional reform and renewal to provide a more satisfactory culture that is fair, just and sustainable. A research culture (p. 107) makes a case for a school being enlivened and driven by a research culture. The focus would extend beyond student learning to include teacher, administrator and school learning. And, finally, From isolation to inclusiveness (p. 109) argues that Australia is not unified but fragmented, with different values not shared ones. This needs to be addressed; we need to build an inclusive society, beginning in our schools.

Trust me, I am a teacher I have heard teachers tell parents: ‘Trust me, I am a teacher.’ But do the teachers trust themselves, let alone their fellow professionals? A book by Deborah Meier, In schools we trust (2002), will stimulate and challenge those who can find time to read it. I share her lack of faith in the so-called team-building exercises such as rope climbing and being led around blindfold. It is not self-evident that trusting someone at the other end of the rope translates directly into trusting your colleagues within the school setting. Unfortunately, learning from training does not automatically follow from one field to another. She argues that the task of growing a professional community is not just about making people feel comfortable being together, it is about helping people to be able to be critical of each other. She has a thesis that will not sit comfortably with many in schools: Good teachers need to be not only accountable for themselves but also for their peers. In the past, teachers claimed their classroom as their own and fought to ensure that it could not be violated by others, no matter if those others were principals, inspectors or fellow teachers. However, the newspapers inform us that some of our peers have misused this trust for their personal sexual gain and yet their peers have not intervened. Government authorities refer to low literacy standards and bored students, arguing that schools have misused their professional independence, allowing standards to slip. If this is not sufficient reason to consider some changes as to how professionals work together, then consider what is happening in the USA and the UK where teachers are being judged and even paid on their students’ performances on such narrow measurable criteria as standardised tests. A


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consequence is that schools and classes are being organised around testing from kindergarten onwards. People remote from the classroom are dictating what happens in that sacred place of adult–child meeting. Is that what we want to happen? Is a return to the once rejected bureaucratisation of schooling the answer? Or does the answer lie elsewhere? As Deborah Meier argues, it is about a trust culture. The community does not trust teachers and schools, and, to make teachers more responsible, is introducing accountability tests. This is why those in schools must rebuild this community trust. It is not good enough to simply say: ‘We are teachers, trust us.’ The trust that Meier wants is based on a community of teachers who display a healthy scepticism for what they and their peers are doing. Trust for her is not an end, but a tool and a goal. As she asserts, teachers have traded away greater on-site professional opportunities for solidarity and friendship. Teachers who will trust each other with their lives are not willing to give constructive feedback to each other. Instead, teachers would prefer principals or inspectors or tests to manage their peers, while they enjoy good relations with these same teachers. It is strange that those who advocate learning are not necessarily good learners themselves. A difference of opinion or practice can be an opportunity for growth, a conflict may be the beginning of a new insight. As well, how teachers handle professional disagreements helps the students (who watch them closely) learn this important life skill. So are those who teach ready to challenge the practices of their peers or do they fear that such an activity will alienate them? Surely classrooms and staffrooms by definition are laboratories for learning the art of helpful criticism. To practise the art of mutual criticism—and this is necessary as it does not come easily to anyone—requires those who teach to trust their peers and themselves to be truly professional. It requires teachers to have a respect for each other’s (and their own) competence and ability to improve over time. It needs patience, a degree of trial and error, and some humility. It is counterproductive to create the harmonious school that cannot openly deal with differences and conflict. Good practice comes only with critical feedback. Surely the goal is to have your fellow teachers’ help to improve your classroom. But it shouldn’t end with your classrooms. What is happening in the whole school is also every teacher’s business. Because teachers have responsibility for their students’ welfare, they have no choice but to be responsible and accountable for the behaviour and performance of their peers. Is this feasible? It certainly is desirable. If those in schools travel this path, then they need to be considering how they as a staff can gather formal and informal observations on student work, as well as on student–teacher interactions. This is turn will lead to the exchange of viewpoints among staff, the establishment of agreed goals and


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the maturing of the teaching profession. Then, and only then, will school staff be able to withstand the bean counters who at this time are gaining ascendancy, with their calls for more and more standardised testing, performance pay and, in the case of the UK, public ridicule of poorly performing staff and schools. The question that we need to consider is not whether the community trusts teachers, but whether those who are teachers trust their fellow teachers and themselves?

New teachers, new teaching: Amanda McGraw I recently spent an afternoon with a leadership team who were contemplating future directions for their school. Entering the foyer of this school is like returning to the front room of my grandparents’ house. Not the back part of the house where the kitchen was warm and bustling with activity, but the formal lounge room where nothing moved for years. The antique furniture is austere. On the dark brown wooden panelling are photos of students during the 1930s, stiff in their formal uniforms and hats. On dusty plates of glass in locked cabinets are dull medals won by sportspeople and cadets, and fragile, ancient songbooks. In a corner, there is a photo of a tombstone marking the tragic death of a past student who died too young during World War I. There is something solid and firm about this entry, something familiar and authoritative, but also something unsettling and frail. While in the voices of leaders there is an urge to move on, here in the darkness of the foyer, the past in all its ambiguity is overwhelming. The past has a vivid and confronting presence in schools that prevents us from envisaging how schools might be different. In many ways, the past is our comfort zone, a known place where our individual and communal identities as teachers and schools rest. Our stories about the past are framed and re-adjusted on regular occasions, and so shared understandings develop that are powerful and influential determinants in decision making. The stories about how we do things here are perpetuated because they reduce anxiety and complexity, but they also work to reduce creativity and conceptual thinking about change. Over the staffroom door is a rowing boat, one of the very early ones that was tenderly and expertly crafted by people who knew how. It hovers over the doorway precariously and is a constant reminder of the importance placed on physical skill and competition at this school. Notions of doing your personal best, feeling pride and a sense of community through winning and scoring, and individual leadership have served many schools and individuals well, but they are also concepts that get in the way of change. These days school principals have coaches to lift personal performance and


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success is rated according to externally set outcomes. Generally, our internalised picture of school is dominated by hierarchical and outdated models that are layered with dust and are in need of transformation. They are also removed from the worlds many of our young people inhabit. We need new ways of imagining, new foundations for the stories we create based on looking forward rather than back. Teacher education is a place to begin such imaginings. Many of our teacher education courses seek to engage with communities and schools in new and innovative ways. While there is a call to provide more school-based experience for student teachers, too often this experience ensures that we get more of the same. Student teachers come to teaching courses with a clear sense of what happens in schools and how teachers operate. Many talk in selection interviews about their desire to pass on knowledge; they believe that through their own rich experiences they have gained understandings that are worth sharing with others. Many talk about teaching as opposed to learning and they share stories of teachers from the past that have inspired them—teachers who they want to be like. So what are we doing in teacher education to help to prepare new teachers for the future? I want to share three initiatives that have been developed in our teacher education course in Ballarat. Through these experiences we aim to establish what Michael Fullan would call moral purpose. We also aim to build relational capacities and more complex understandings of how learning develops. At the beginning of the year in the Graduate Diploma of Education (Secondary) course, we arrange for our student teachers to spend two days with young people who are disengaged with school or who have left school early. The student teachers talked afterwards about their prior assumptions about these students. Because we told them they would be working with disengaged school students, most expected that the students may not be very intelligent. Many also felt afraid. They thought they would be personally challenged by difficult behaviour and were not sure how they would deal with this. Instead, the student teachers found they were able to work with the disengaged students. Together they talked of the emotional and relational experience of school, the importance of belonging—of being known and respected. The students shared stories that were full of tension and anxiety. The student teachers found that students who challenge the system and take risks have much to teach them. In our course we also require student teachers to be mentors for young people in the community. We provide mentor training that aims to build reflexive capacity and challenge personal values. Some of our students work with the Smith Family as Big Buddies. Some are mentors in a unique driving program that aims to equip disadvantaged young people with safe driving practices. Some work with early school leavers who are not able to get


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employment and others with young people who are at risk of leaving school early. At the end of the year we celebrate these relationships and the learning that has occurred through them by inviting parents, teachers and friends to exhibitions of project work and small group discussions where experiences are examined and shared. We are also trialling a new approach to school-based experience. Teams of student teachers are placed in schools with teams of teachers who are working on new learning and teaching initiatives. Together they design curriculum and assessment practices, conduct research and reflect on students learning. As an example, this year a team of our students will work with a team of Year 9 teachers who are designing a community, problembased learning experience. The student teachers will develop their collab orative and communication skills, and will learn more about the complexity of designing curriculum that meets the present and future needs of students in a particular learning context. The experienced teachers will also learn from our students who will introduce new ideas, theory and enthusiasm into the experienced team. In this model, everyone learns. These are just three examples of ways we are helping to prepare future teachers for a different model of education: one that is more collaborative, inquiring and focused on lifelong learning. Such approaches to learning are not about producing simplistic outcomes that can be easily quantified. Instead, they aim to prepare new teachers for a career based on ongoing questioning, collaborative problem solving and relating to people. Rather than the sports model, a more useful metaphor for the future of schooling is a web or a network. In our course, we actively seek to develop partnerships with community-based organisations and with people in schools. Through these partnerships emerge new possibilities and new learning opportunities for all. The network develops a dynamic life of its own as new activity builds new connections and developments. The network is a community that has some crucial linking components but there is no centre—no single leader. The network is at once reliant and independent; collaborative and entrepreneurial. I sometimes think of our network as an elaborate, intricate, Aboriginal dot painting that is organic and ever expanding. Here, in the relationship between the dots, lies the future of teaching.

Hands up, please! Principals and teachers carry in their heads images of orderly and managed classroom settings. But are these images helpful? Imagine you are seated around the dining room table enjoying a meal with seven other people. The person opposite, who wants to contribute to the conversation, raises her hand. Would you laugh or perhaps give


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directions to the toilet? You don’t raise your hand to contribute conversation at a dinner party! Nor do we need a chairperson to manage our social interactions. Yet it seems that schools must be managed differently. I remember a recent experience of sitting in a gathering of 40 people. Initially, the conversation was dominated by a few and I was happy to sit quietly. I soon became bored and considered opting out by talking to the person next to me, reading a book or even going to sleep. However, I managed to be more positive by contributing to the group, taking some responsibility for myself and for the direction of the group. This experience made me think about the times when students have sat in my classes or school assemblies and, just like me, were bored. Large groups aren’t our normal experience of life and yet they are the primary experience we give to school students. For most students this method is not useful, as it fosters dependency and stifles initiative except in antisocial ways, such as in disobedience and rudeness. By setting up a class where there are 20-plus students facing one authoritative person, we are modelling a structure that places responsibility on the teacher. This does not encourage students to take responsibility for their learning and establishes a pattern for dependency later in life. If the teacher’s role continues to be like a sergeant in the army or a police officer enforcing rules, or a factory manager delivering product, then student and adult dependency is taught. But it is not just the structure of classes; the whole organisation of school is hierarchical. There are strong organisational hierarchies, professional status, vertical academic or vocational subjects, standardised entry and progression, and centralised control over change. In the book Flight of the buffalo, Belasco and Stayer (1994) assert that the tendency to upward delegation has its origins in our education system. We have been trained to look to someone in authority for direction throughout life, and as a result we avoid taking personal responsibility. We have become like buffalos. Buffalos are apparently absolutely loyal followers. They stand around and wait for the leader to show them what to do. When the leader isn’t around, they wait for him to show up. That is why the early American settlers could decimate buffalo herds so easily by killing the lead buffalo. I love being a victim. It’s so easy. After all, why be responsible when I can blame someone else for all of my misfortune? I have often heard myself say: ‘They won’t let me do it. “They” are the problem. If only they would get out of the way, everything would be all right.’ (Belasco & Stayer 1994, p. 35)


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I am not arguing in this instance against classes in general, although that would be a big step forward. Nor am I calling for smaller class sizes, although that would also be an improvement. Rather, I am asking teachers and school administrators to consider the learned behaviour of dependence. From many years in classes at school and university, years when we have had to sit at the feet of authoritarian teachers, we have learned to follow. We have been told what to study, when to have assignments completed, what points are important and we have been rewarded with high marks, graduation and subsequent employment for our compliance. But the personal consequences are that many of us feel powerless and lack direction. We see this in many staffrooms where there is a feeling of being put upon by ‘them’. Teachers feel the pressure of ‘their’ request for higher performance. Teachers find little time for themselves. Like students in classes, some are angry and others simply emotionally opt out. If the origins of dependency among teachers, and other school graduates, can be traced back to the school setting when those teachers were themselves students, then the social price for organising student learning in this way is too high. When the Ku Klux Klan was at its worst and performing all sorts of atrocities, Martin Luther King Junior said that he could forgive the members of this Klan more than he could forgive the millions of silent Americans who had not spoken up against what was happening. Why is the majority silent? Can this be traced to their school experience where they had no voice and where they learnt to follow, not lead? Teaching a class of students defined by age is a model of instruction that needs to be revisited. Already we are seeing some new options. In our community, an increasingly large do-it-yourself educational sector (including home schooling) is developing, with access to good resources such as books, television, the Internet, curriculum provided by business providers and groups with common outlooks, and supported by friends and family. Will this lead to different social outcomes such as personal and community responsibility? Yes, let’s put up our hands, if that is necessary to be heard, but more importantly let us speak up and take greater responsibility for ourselves and our community.

A sharing culture Creating a mentoring culture (Zachary 2005) is the title of a book that caught my eye when browsing in a bookshop. The blurb states that ‘in order to succeed in today’s competitive environment, corporate and non-profit


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institutions must create a workplace climate that encourages employees to continue to learn and grow’. I have no problem with seeking to entrench such a commitment into the culture of schools. I have always preferred working in a setting that fosters and supports learning. But how is this learning to be done? Is it to be through classes with teachers out the front, or designated senior staff mentors, or are we to encourage and support growth through caring and sharing with all staff acting as both teachers and learners? We all need the stimulation and the advice from recognised gurus and experienced staff. But all wisdom does not rest with them. Schools need to be active in developing their own way forward and this means releasing the potential of all staff to contribute. Schools can do this by providing comfortable settings in the workplaces to which staff are attracted. Here, with little expenditure other than on good coffee and tea facilities, staff would be able to share experiences and provide mentoring to each other. Schools can encourage critical thinking and reflection by actively seeking questions from staff at meetings, making it clear that the only silly question is the unasked question. Senior staff can lead by example by telling others what is planned before it is done and asking for input. Many staff members will vouch for the fact that their best learning was not from a fantastic course that they attended, but arose from sharing stories of successes and failures with peers. There is evidence that informally gained tacit knowledge, which is understood but often unstated, converts better to relevant explicit knowledge than does formal knowledge from courses. Bowles (2004) notes that ‘approximately 70% of what employees need to know to do their jobs successfully is learnt outside formal training’ (p. 111). In other words, the emphasis is first on connecting people, and then the sharing of experience and informal mentoring follows. While much of what happens in conversations is not work-orientated, don’t underestimate the value of the work-focused conversations embedded in this chat or the collegiality so engendered. Technology can play an important role in assisting a culture to be a knowledge-sharing one, in that it connects people who otherwise would not meet in person. Unfortunately, some school cultures stress secrecy and avoid dis closure of even the most basic information. There are some school cultures that are punitive, with name and blame the preferred mode of behaving. Then there are the negative or veto cultures that obstruct planning. These negative cultures, lacking the power to create change, focus instead on coalescing enough support to object in ways that impede change. As well as personal sharing that is mutually beneficial on an intraand inter-personal level, there is the strategic knowledge sharing on which an organisation depends.


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An isolated knowledge management programme looked after by a privileged few is a paradox in itself and will not survive for long. Only effective collaboration and communication which spans across the whole … [school] structure will give knowledge management the boost it really needs. (Gurteen 1999)

Let us create not only a mentoring culture but also a sharing culture. Schools need both to survive!

An open culture We need to believe that a conflict of ideas, different ways of doing things, open rather than guarded discourse, and admitting to feelings and mistakes may represent a way forward, rather than being something destructive to ourselves or to the community. Too often schools exclude parents and the community from real participation in the dialogue about what is best for students and the school. Instead of communicating to parents and the community ‘you are able, valuable and responsible’ (Fink 2005, p. 43) they discourage a critical dialogue. Increasingly, schools—like politicians—employ public relations people to put a good spin on what is happening in the school. As a principal, one of my pet hates was the fact that I was often the last to hear when staff members were unhappy. Staff, presumably through fear, had their negative talk behind closed staffroom doors. It was even said to me by one senior member of staff that the staff common room was for teachers and not a place for the principal. So how do we talk and how do we meet to resolve problems if there is this physical divide? In fairness to the staff I have just criticised, I have to confess that I sometimes had trouble delivering unfavourable feedback when I knew that it would hurt. It is easy when we are angry to speak our mind. At that time we are aware only of our personal feelings. But when in a more sensitive mode, aware of the feelings of others, we hesitate and do not deliver the bad news because we do not wish to hurt that person. Finding your voice and allowing other voices in discourse is important for each individual and their feelings of self-worth. But it is also critical for the school that alternative scenarios are considered and explored. While there are some black and white imperatives in our everyday lives, like driving on the correct side of the road, most complex questions, such as those we meet in the real world, have no right way or only one solution. Our Western market democracy is a second-order system; the basic public values we share focus on the process (e.g. individual fairness, rights) not the outcome, which can be described as first-order goals derived from a


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myth-based perfection model. This makes the process harder as there is not always one right answer. It commits us to search together for mutually acceptable solutions. Real differences, rather than being destructive, can introduce new ideas and possible solutions, and if we approach this in the spirit of positive inquiry, differences can add excitement into the search. Equally challenging is when we do not know the answer to a question. Some of us try to hide this ignorance. Why not acknowledge our lack of knowledge and use the question to spur inquiry? I have recently added to my emails a quote: ‘I store my knowledge in my friends.’ I do this because I know and accept that I have knowledge deficits and that without the knowledge of others, I will be unable to be effective in my various roles. I accept that it is more important to know where to source knowledge than to personally hold knowledge. We need to reconceptualise our culture so that it is not a confronting space but a shared space. We come to the school environment as people with feelings and ideas, with different skills and different aspirations. Let us celebrate this humanity and apply our combined intelligence and knowledge to the management of the complexity that we encounter. I remember reading about how a group of people, who had all experienced deep hurt within an institution, had met with the administrators to discuss their hurt. Instead of accusing the administrators of insensitivity or demanding immediate action, they shared their stories of suffering, sorrow and oppression. To the credit of the administrators, before any outcome was suggested, there was a real attempt to hear the stories and to allow the hurt to be talked about. Such was the strength of the stories that the administrators found themselves becoming aware of their own personal hurt. This became a joining, not a confronting situation, with an acceptable outcome achieved for all. What a challenging idea. Those who are suffering are not just obstacles to the work that we had planned for the day; they could be the guides to the rest of our life. The sensitivity, openness and honesty of these suffering people contrast sharply to my focused, goal-orientated attitude to work. I need to be reminded that my important task is in what Martin Buber calls the ‘I–Thou’ dimension and not in the alternative, impersonal ‘I–It’ dimension. I need to be led back to places deep within myself, as well as to the outer parts of the universe and to the inner parts of the atom. Our human existence, with all its vulnerabilities, needs to be acknowledged. We need to risk deep, personal encounters so that we can emotionally grow in strength and in character. We need to loosen our protective barriers, to let people into our personal space, so that together we can share our burdens. We need to forgo power and status, and put our faith in love, compassion and humility.


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But is this too simplistic a formula to be applied to schools? Are principals open to sharing their mistakes with their staff and the community or do they only share their successes? Are teachers willing to invite other teachers into their classrooms or would they prefer the old way of closed doors and professional independence? (See Trust me, I am a teacher, p. 91.) Most of us wish to avoid confronting personal failure and that means we are in a perpetual state of denial about the true situation. For our self-protection, we assume that things are better than they are in actuality, that obstacles can always be overcome, and that reality can be conveniently reconstructed. A wish to be school mates, rather than professional critics, may well be the fault of past scary bosses and could even go back to our early convict origins. Whatever the source, it is embedded in our Australian culture and in many school cultures. My definition of an effective school does not include a school with staff experiencing singleness of purpose in an atmosphere of complete harmony. Such descriptions of schools are utopian. They do not allow for the human element or for the societal context. What is worse, such descriptions confuse the purpose of schools and create despair and disillusionment for all associated with schools. Effectiveness in schools is not a product but a process. An effective school is a self-critical school, where staff members acknowledge the necessity to constantly evaluate, to accept criticism and to adjust goals to the needs of students. In an effective school, disagreements are not causes for concern but the yeast to keep the school rising. Schools are peopled places. Let us reconceptualise our workplaces so that they become a shared and supportive environment with an open culture.

Managing ourselves Are we prepared to manage ourselves? Peter Drucker (2000) thinks not! Many of my friends complain about their work. Sometimes it is the nature of their work, but mostly it seems to be the work culture that is getting them down. As someone who enjoys what I do, I am sad for people who are unhappy in their work. One friend, with an important challenging career, only enjoys her unpaid leadership role in a not-for-profit organisation. Another friend with a high profile position in an international organisation finds the politics demoralising and the hierarchy impersonal and unrealistic. Then there are the many teacher friends who slip so easily into the ‘them and us’ way of talking, ‘us’ the workers and ‘them’ in administration who do not respect ‘us’. This discrepancy between what we want and what we have, reminds me of Neil Postman’s writing about the twilight zone between illusion and


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reality (1982). But Postman was not talking about adults, he was referring to the children of the 1980s, whom he saw as paralysed because of their learnt behaviour of passivity, which is how they viewed TV. But today’s young people are not passive, at least outside of school. Their ‘TV’ is interactive, with games, chat and web cameras. They have appropriated a global digital resource, for which ‘only adults need learner’s permits’ (Negroponte 1995, p. 231). These computer and Internet children are active, curious, find challenge irresistible and are self-directed in their worlds. Their interests are not necessarily those of the adults who have written the school curriculum. They are not bothered by hierarchy nor are they worried, as we are, by the views of significant others. While our generation had strong parents, powerful schools and even churches to direct us, young people operate freely today without these hierarchies. Because of their participation in the digital environment, they learn differently to the way their teachers and parents learnt. These differences extend beyond learning through to how they work, think, shop and create. The digital technologies allow them both to feel and to be free. Tapscott (1998) nominates some dominant characteristic of today’s young people, a group he calls Netizens. They are participants, not just observers. They like to share their knowledge and their time and do not always expect to be remunerated for this. And they like to play. These Netizens of today are different to the citizens of yesterday. By being exposed to unlimited information and to contrasting ideas, the young Netizens do not hesitate to voice their opinions and ideas. Have we adults been conditioned by our past to be dependent and is that the basis of our feelings of powerlessness? We have great knowledge, but that does not seem to free us. We remain unhappy in our work, despite knowing all about stress management, having skills in assertiveness and training in career education. We compete with our peers, despite knowing the value of cooperation and sharing. Because the past rules our minds, we are left unable to apply our knowledge to free ourselves. Do we need to revisit our criteria as to what constitutes a good learner, not for our young people, but for ourselves? If new technologies have assisted our young people to independence of mind and to the beginning of a new social structure, could these technologies also help us? For example, if we want to publish, we are no longer at the mercy of a publishing house, we can publish on the Internet. If we wish to teach, we do not need to be employed by a school. We could go out on our own, not just tutoring on a one-on-one basis, but setting up classes. We could join with others and become a cooperative. We could use the Internet to link with others and establish e-learning communities. We could research the needs of others in the community, just as in the past we would


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have searched for an employer. Having found what services people need, then we could proceed to deliver those that accord with our skills and interests. Do we need an employer, particularly when there are so many problems with organisations? Dare we take responsibility for ourselves? Could we become Netizens? ‘Dreaming’, you say! I wonder? It seems to me that if our work is creating a poisonous environment, then not only do we need to take positive action for ourselves, but we need to be reforming our work culture. Having proposed a radical course of action, I am all too aware of the problems of going solo. I have just spent a frustrating day when my computer was not working properly. If I was in an organisation, someone would be there who could fix this and I would not have wasted a day. Yet there must be someone out there with these skills who would like to sort this out for me—be proactive David! As for submitting accounts and keeping records including GST, I think this boring, but it could be outsourced too! I find the worst part of self-employment to be the lack of community. I need people and that means I need to be proactive again, building such a community. And I am sure that when that community of associates and friends is established, it will not be poisonous! Our young people live and work in a complex, ungraded, multi-age, interactive and dynamic environment. They decide for themselves what is possible. They learn and research thoroughly what they find interesting. They are the decision makers as to pace, content and timing. Could we learn from them or are we defined forever as the passive TV generation described by Postman? Can we manage ourselves?

Punishment or reform? The first response to September 11 was a call to arms, increased military spending and more covert intelligence, all focused on finding culprits and establishing significant deterrents. Similarly, when students do not want to attend school there are some communities that want not only to punish the student but also the parent! But is this punishment to be our primary response to the challenge of citizen alienation from their Western culture and student alienation from the schooling process? To understand this punishment or reform thinking, consider what we have learnt from history, even our short history as Australians. England in the eighteenth century sought to rid itself of criminals who were creating problems in their community. So they established a penal colony on Aboriginal land in Australia. Convicted criminals, as their punishment, were sent across treacherous seas to remote Botany Bay and such a dire punishment was meant to deter others from criminal behaviour. Yet the


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flow of criminals to Australia and into the jails continued because the source of the social problem was not addressed. Then the seemingly impossible happened. Those rejects of society, of whom not much was expected, built a world which, while not perfect, has a commitment to human rights, support in the law and in the culture for every sort of freedom, and affluence for many. While Australia was established as a remote penal prison there were other motives that drove the establishment of this colony. The idealists saw the possibility of taking the rejects of one society and reforming them into good citizens in a newly created society. To some, Australia was to be an experiment in reformation, the beginning of a new order. But it was not just those early convicts who sought to build a reformed society. Later, settlers came here to escape what they saw as unjust societies in Europe and so reform continued as a commitment by another generation of Australians. Today, Australians assert that they are still committed to reform. They claim to be working for a more humane society that respects individ uals, and encourages their growth as positive individuals and as caring members of a cooperative society. Yet inequalities in education and in wealth continue to define our Australian society as one that has not yet achieved its vision of a better world. This country continues to be a breeding ground for discontent arising out of such inequalities. A lesson from our past is that it is not enough simply to remove criminals; we need to create a setting where criminality and terror do not flourish. If there is to be a national levy to pay for increased defence force spending, let there also be an additional levy to increase spending on edu cation. We would laugh if someone proposed supporting our greater defence commitments with fetes, selling chocolate, trivia nights, playing bingo and the like. Why then do we think that it is good enough for education extensions to be funded in such a minimal way? One of the great advances in Australian society happened when we discarded our European orientation and became multicultural. This has meant the introduction of new ideas and new ways of doing things. Differences in gender, race and colour, far from being a problem, represent an opportunity for growth and diversity. Australia is not restricted by one cultural inheritance, but can pick from many. The potential for a creative reformation is thus greater. Australia has become a raft which people from around the world have clung to for safety and on which they are attempting to build their hopes for a better future. Together these people, from different cultural origins, may be able to make their raft into a stable platform on which they can build a new,


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more equitable society. We have established strong laws to ensure equal opportunity and respect. But this will never be enough if we do not have the hearts and minds of all our people committed to such ideals. To do this we need to address more than laws, we need to address spirit and values. Human beings are essentially spiritual creatures because we are driven by a need to ask ‘fundamental’ or ‘ultimate’ questions … We have a longing to see our lives in some larger, meaning-giving context, whether this is the family, the community, the football club, our life’s work, our religious framework or the universe itself. We have a longing … that takes us beyond ourselves and the present moment, for something that gives us and our actions a sense of worth. (Zohar & Marshall 2001, p. 4)

Unfortunately, our society today has been infected by materialism and this is not offering the spiritual basis to sustain and enliven our young people. As a result, we have to deal with drugs, suicide and despondence. So we end up struggling to gain the attention and attendance of students in our schools and then resorting to punishment. Learning is not just about inert knowledge that is value free, floating in a materialist world. While a good education builds on basic knowledge, requires personal application and involves rigour, education is about more than this. It needs to address the question of meaning, of self and society. There are questions to be pondered: Who am I? How do we attain a just and sustainable society? We all need some sort of spiritual basis in order to make some meaning of our lives. ‘One of the most profound new insights of twentieth-century science is that wholes can be greater than the sum of their parts’ (Zohar & Marshall 2001, p. 18). The fear that truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance, in a culture that had become a burlesque, was the subject of a book by Aldous Huxley, Brave new world. While his book was written in 1932, it continues to bring a relevant message to us. In describing a ‘negative utopia’, Huxley sought to provide a frightening vision of the future where no big brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, they do it for themselves by choosing not to read or to be informed. Huxley feared that what we love would ruin us. His message was that we need an educated community as a defence against evil domination. Without a good education system, we fail regardless of the strength of our armed forces. Is Australia only committed to the removal (punishment) of certain individuals and groups or do we want seek a true reformation of society? And what about organisations like schools? Are they willing to consider a reformation in their thinking?


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The old organisations have become sufficiently insulated and selfcongratulatory to ignore the chasm that has formed between their practices, invented for a mass society, and the new society that it has spawned … It is not the new individuals who have failed the old organisations, but rather the old organisations that have failed the new individuals … When the old clothes no longer fit, make new ones. (Zuboff & Maxmin 2004, pp. 116–7)

We need to not only respect learning, we need to encourage a critical and informed community that benefits from differing views and respects integrity in others, even if they think differently to ourselves.

A values-based culture Why do employees stay in their current roles? Certainly status, salary, superannuation and holidays are important. But alone they are not enough. Everyone wants to be needed, to find fulfilment and satisfaction in their work roles. Satisfaction follows directly when our personal needs are being met, when there is some alignment between what the employer wants of us and what we wish to contribute. I am aware of one company that had been losing good professional staff and tried to address this by increasing salary and holidays. This did reduce the staff losses, but good staff continued to leave. While the remaining staff appreciated the added benefits, staff unhappiness continued and so more losses were expected. In this case, the real issues of work load, repressive work culture and insensitivity of the boss had not been addressed. We spend countless hours in our given work roles and for some of us this can be without much joy or satisfaction. We can be overwhelmed by pressing detailed tasks, often clerical in nature, with tight deadlines and attend to these first before we attend to the larger issues. The relative trivia of these tasks tranquillise us, but leave us feeling joyless in our roles. While it is important that we attend to these tasks, our role in schools is larger than this. We are there to assist young people to grow, to interact with other adults in a collaborative way and to plan for today and tomorrow. We need time to regain our perspective, to reassess why we came into this profession, to rediscover our calling, to find meaning and purpose in our work and joy in its execution. A failure to do this will translate into a diminished ability to be effective, at ease and fulfilled. Continued failure could put us at risk of becoming apathetic and maybe even cynical and hostile. In schools, we are familiar with helping students with values clarification, but perhaps a more pressing task is to help staff, including the leadership team, to clarify what is most important. It is essential that staff understand


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what satisfies them and what does not. When staff know and understand what drives them, they will have a sharper sense of their identity, more selfassurance and greater effectiveness in their roles. ‘Dangerous’, I hear some people saying. ‘Let us stay on the safer ground of pedagogy and curriculum in our staff meetings!’ But the reality is that work decisions are based on personal values, attitudes and beliefs. These need to be brought out into the open, examined and discussed, and alignment sought with the school’s values, attitudes and beliefs. As difficult as this is, values clarification is the way to a more collegial and effective school. A firm values framework is at the heart of decision making and job satisfaction. Our decisions are always based on our beliefs, attitudes and values, whether we are aware of this or not. Decisions based on personal values tend to be made with more consistency than those based on financial, political or purely situational factors. Without clarity about our values, we lose confidence in our decisions, we can become confused and left unfulfilled in our roles. The retention and further development of staff are critical matters for schools that wish to be successful. Not only is intellectual property disappearing with exiting employees, so is the bottom line disappearing with the costs of constant recruitment and orientation of new staff. Job satisfaction and talent management are the two sides of the one coin.

A research culture While in England, I was introduced to the idea of the school as a centre of research. Since returning to Australia, I have proposed this idea to a few people in schools. From some I received support and from others a strong, negative reaction. ‘We are too busy for this. Have you forgotten how full the curriculum is?’ ‘It is not our primary task. We are implementers not initiators. Our task is to deliver a curriculum and get students into the courses they want at university.’ ‘We are not skilled in this area. What do I know about research?’ I even had from one teacher this amazing response: ‘Research is what losers do when they cannot get a real job!’ Yet at the same time, I found Australian schools grappling with some fundamental questions that they did not have the answers to. One school had found that their Year 8 girls were more disengaged from school than the Year 8 boys. I asked if the school had any theories as to why this was the case. ‘Yes’ was the reply, but they said they did not have the time or resources to research out the cause, let alone find solutions. At another school there were some spirited discussions about the new Victorian proposal for teacher assessment, which suggested that the quality of the teaching–learning relationship be


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measured from multiple sources, including using feedback from parents and students. To obtain this information, systematic and careful research would need to be done by teachers in order for them to deliver facts not opinions. As I reflected on this, I began to wonder whether knowledge has become a commodity rather than the stimulus for activity in our acquisitive society. I even had the scary thought that as a profession we might be afraid of research! I would like to make a case for a school being enlivened and driven by a research culture. One of the important goals of schooling is to assist students in their search for knowledge. This involves fostering the love of learning, encouraging the inquiring mind and providing skills for students that will enable them to be able to find answers to questions that are yet to be asked in our changing society. We ask of our teachers that they not only teach students how to research, but also to model the process of research. It is not enough to give students questions, with the answers in the back of the book. Such a process suggests that there is always a correct answer, when this is not the case for most of the problems that they (and we) meet in our lives. Yet, the curriculum and the pedagogy of today do not support basic research. Teachers mostly find they are too busy implementing a curriculum to spend too much time dealing with the unknown. Furthermore, there is not a lot of encouragement to undertake personal research; this is seen either as a luxury or the domain of others. This is a pity, as teachers have important raw data and they need to be supported and encouraged to analyse this through research. But teacher research is important for another reason. Students, too, are struggling with a lot of raw data that needs to be analysed and they would benefit from some good role modelling. Life, both in and out of school, involves intuitive and spontaneous judgements that need to be turned into more systematic investigations. At the heart of the learning process is an open, questioning mind, a concern for evidence and a commitment to systematic inquiry. When teachers become researchers within the school and within the curriculum, then we can expect research activity to flow on to the students, with students becoming researchers too. But there is another important layer here. Increasingly, schools are being asked to be self-evaluating and to be open to scrutiny, and this means being more evidence-based in their thinking and communicating. It is not about a school’s survival, taking a defensive position, but choosing a proactive position by seeking development and growth. Interestingly, a research-based school may eventuate not because of the nature of knowledge, curriculum considerations or assumptions about


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scientific inquiry, but as a result of an administrative requirement that teachers demonstrate their achievements as part of their professional assessment, using data that they have gathered. Any school that seeks to be research-based will need to develop a culture that will sustain this. This may not be an easy school to be employed at, for such a school will be critical of received knowledge and sceptical about many current practices. For changes to occur, evidence will need to be gathered to show that this is the correct method, and this may be difficult to achieve! Everything will be open to questioning. The task of growing a professional community is not just about making people feel comfortable; it is about helping people to be able to be critical of themselves and of each other. A research-enlivened school will need collaborators. Some of these will be outside the school, such as at university or in the community. Other collaborators will be in neighbouring schools. But it would be expected that most would be within the school as staff, students and parents. For a school to be research-based, it must put research at the heart of school policy and practice. The focus should not be just on student learning, but also on teacher, administrator and school learning. Furthermore, for research to be a focus, it must be properly funded—not only with time release from classes or administration, but also with financial and other resources. Government and funding agencies need to be lobbied for support. May the number of schools involved in research increase.

From isolation to inclusiveness Ask most Australians whether they live in a community and they’ll say they do, but for the most part we’re just an aggregation of individuals who happen to live in the same place. If we really want Australia to be a community, we need to consider others, not least from within our schools. Ignoring the importance of community is not something new to Western society. If we look back into history, we find that images people held in their mind about their human identity were other than those of a cohesive and supportive society (Jennison & Ogborn 1994). In antiquity, the focus was on the timeless and the beautiful depicted in statues and expressed in the quest for personal immortality. During the industrial revolution, the focus was on movement and progress—ideas encapsulated by the steam engine. In that era, infatuated by motion, it was discovered that even continents moved and that the universe began with a big bang. In our current era, the focus is on the transactional, which is encapsulated by the computer with its inputs and outputs and its capacity to solve sophisticated problems. Is it too much to hope that tomorrow—optimistically the beginning of a new era—we might look for a more communal image of ourselves,


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such as is suggested by an inclusive society? In an inclusive society there are shared interests, purposes and values that move people to action, and an interconnectedness that holds them together. Australian society is not unified, but fragmented. We don’t have shared values, we have different ones. More than that, we have two forms of exclusion within our society. There are those at the bottom who are excluded by society and there are those at the top with sufficient resources to voluntarily exclude themselves—living separately in fortress communities with the support of law. Both groups are growing in number and schooling is supporting this fracture in society. Those forcibly excluded from society are the poor, those with substance abuse, involved in crime or with educational underachievement. In what way are we reaching out to these people to help them? Many of our fellow citizens believe that it is up to these problem people to help themselves: ‘We’ve managed in a free market situation, why can’t they?’ An alternative response is to pass the responsibility to the government: ‘That’s why we have social services.’ Individuals and not-for-profit agencies, such as the Salvation Army, do reach out with help, but as individuals and as a community we mostly sit on our hands. What about the so-called global village that we live in? We don’t share our resources with the poor and undeveloped countries, nor do we try to understand and live with cultures that have different values and ideologies. Do we lack commitment to those who are less fortunate because we don’t feel that we are members of an inclusive society, one that is inclusive of them and us? ‘People who feel themselves members of a [local,] national [and international] community are likely to acknowledge a commitment to others within it’ (Giddens 1998, p. 29). Or is it that we are afraid of losing the individual freedoms that we demand and enjoy, as they can come into conflict with our ideals of equality. ‘It is no good pretending that equality, pluralism, economic dynamism are always compatible’ (Giddens 1998, p. 26). Whatever the reason, it is time for action and schools should be leading the way. Our young people are not only tomorrow’s leaders, but through them we have access into many homes where young people could be assisted to set an agenda other than materialism and individualism. Novels, films, plays and the Internet are resources for students to explore issues of fragmentation in our society. But we want to move beyond knowledge to incite our young people to take action and to show their commitment to a more inclusive society. We should be looking to schools and teachers to model the way forward by ensuring, that at least in the school, values of inclusiveness are honoured. We should be looking to our governments and accreditation agencies to measure and value such commitments and actions. Universities, for example, should require evidence of significant community service before admitting a student to further study.


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Let us, each one, move from our isolation into community, accepting and working cooperatively with all other members of our community. Let’s build an inclusive society, beginning in our schools.

Locked in For days before a recent overseas flight, I watched planes fly overhead; I was excited by the prospect of flying. However, on entering my dream machine, I discovered the reality was different. I was locked up in a narrow metal container with about 250 other people and confined in an economy seat for 12 hours. I quickly realised that it was not the transitional object—the plane—but the destination—my holiday—that had been the essential part of my dream. I wonder if our politicians have similarly confused dreams, focusing on educational transitional structures rather than on outcomes, confusing means with ends. The Federal Government is advocating a uniform starting age; a common Year 12 qualification; and standardised policies, processes, curriculum and examinations to feed into benchmarked tests for Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. I believe these policies will be for our students like the plane experience was for me—restrictive, impersonal and no fun. I had little choice; I needed a plane or a boat to reach my destination. But our students, their parents and teachers could have choices. So why restrict schooling so unnecessarily, emphasising administrative uniformity at the expense of more personalised learning opportunities? A uniform school starting age and common Year 12 certificates may make it easier for administrators and for families transferring interstate, but they are not in the best interests of all students. Children are different and are ready for school at different ages. Even if all children were ready at the one age, there is no agreement on what age that would be. Similarly, a common curriculum is not appropriate for all; students have different readiness, life experiences, abilities and interests. How can one curriculum meet all their needs? And besides, there is no consensus as to what is the curriculum and the means of assessing it. As for benchmarking tests, feedback is a critical part of advancing a student’s learning and, for this purpose, tests are an important resource. But is this how these tests will be used? Or are these tests to be used to check and measure teachers and schools, and maybe even for name and blame as we have seen with UK school inspections? In what to me is an inconsistency, the government is at the same time advocating diversity and specialisation in the university sector, not the uniformity and standardisation it is seeking to impose on schooling. The purpose of schooling is to graduate mature and confident young people equipped for our new age and to build a healthier, respectful and sustainable society. So we need to be focusing on these outcomes. Given the


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complexity of our society and the wide range of abilities and interests of students, it is unlikely that a one-size-fits-all approach will work. It is one thing to wish for a return to a simpler, more conformist society, but that option no longer exists, if it ever did. Measuring and evaluating the outcomes of learning is important, but complex. For example, in schools all evaluation assumes that students work individually. If you work with someone else, it’s called cheating. Yet, in the real world, everything you do involves working with other people. Don’t we also need to know how students manage themselves and others, and how confident and capable they are in navigating complicated social situations? Companies, as well as politicians, have been misled by existing measurements. Companies have fought for the high achievers from schools and universities. Enron was the ultimate talent company and it failed. Enron recruited top performers, believing in stars. They assumed that an organisation’s intelligence is simply a function of the high intelligence of individual employees. In a way, that’s understandable, because our lives are so obviously enriched by individual brilliance. Groups don’t write great novels and a committee didn’t come up with the theory of relativity. But companies, communities, societies and families work by different rules. They don’t just create; they communicate, express love and support, plan, dream, manage, have values and integrate with others. Let us stop oversimplifying the learning process, denying the complexity of our society and reading too much into measurements. For too long we have assumed that there is only one solution—gather students in safe environments called schools, and enclose them with policies and regulations that will exclude foreign intrusions by parents, community or technology. Our young people have rich and free lives, they have access to knowledge and teachers from many sources, and they are capable of managing their learning. They have demonstrated this in areas that interest them, achieving deep cognitive and emotional knowledge. If politicians and school leaders wish to advance schooling, they need to forgo uniform systems and respond to diversity. These young people need a more open environment in which they can be active, independent and purposeful learners working both individually and collaboratively. They need more alternative pathways—not fewer—to assist them in their learning.

Polity and schools We are reminded often enough of the importance of a healthy economy, but, unfortunately, there is never much said about a healthy polity. In fact, even the word is foreign—at least to me. When I recently heard the word, I


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was forced to look it up in the dictionary. There I found that polity is ‘the state as a social and political entity, governed in the interests of all’. It involves a process of social government, what we call politics. Professor Brian Costar, in discussing Freedom and diversity: Real challenges to democracy, argues that politics is the ‘master science’ (2006). So move over chemistry, physics, psychology … you are no longer fundamental to our existence—as individuals or as a society. And I am not just talking curriculum for students, I mean that politics needs to be something that we all participate in. I can’t say that the idea appeals to me, but the logic for participation is strong. Costar’s point is that because we live within organised communities (polities), disagreements naturally arise about values and the allocation of resources. Unfortunately, we can’t all have what we want! So, if we wish to avoid violence, if we wish to have a more inclusive, fair society, then we need to be part of a process where by these disagreements can be resolved politically. Like it or not (and most of us don’t) politics about the allocation of resources and defining of values in schooling cannot be ignored. We need to speak up and not leave others to set an agenda, particularly when we don’t like what is happening now and what is proposed for the future. All schools, but some more than others, need additional funds to be effective. Professor Brian Caldwell (2006) made this point very well in his book Re-imagining educational leadership. As well, we don’t pay teachers a high enough salary to attract the best new graduates into the profession or to retain good teachers. There are insufficient funds to provide adequate professional development. The provision of embedded technology to support learning in many schools lags badly behind community usage and student adoption. All these deficiencies restrict our students’ learning. And the problems for learners will not be solved with more money. To simply do more of the same is to fail. We need to acknowledge that our present system of schooling is unsatisfactory, delivering and supporting inequality in opportunity and outcomes for students. This is true not just between systems but also within schools. If these problems were not enough, we have governments and their instrumentalities imposing an unhelpful structure and inappropriate measurements on the learning process. Yes, it is unsatisfactory that some students are leaving schools unable to read and write effectively. However, the answer is not to impose on all students a one-size-fits-all mandated curriculum, nor to measure teachers’ performance against criteria that does not reward teacher initiative and flexibility. There is evidence from the UK—where much of schooling is more mandated than in Australia—that when teachers


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and principals feel they are under close scrutiny with fearful accountability consequences, such as public criticism and the possible loss of employment, sensitivity to student needs and flexibility is lost. We have no choice. If necessary, we too may have to take to the streets. The present situation is unsatisfactory and those with power need to know that we are losing patience with their bureaucratic autocracy. We want more money allocated to education, more flexibility in curriculum and pedagogy, and more authority to those who work with young people directly.


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Leadership and the Leader

4

destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for; it is a thing to be achieved. (William Jennings Bryan cited in Springen 1991)

We need leadership if we are to deliver relevant schooling for the new generation. It is through leaders understanding the bigger picture, speaking out for the good of all, driving reform and managing scarce resources that we can make a difference to the learning outcomes for individual students and the community. The leadership we need will come from two sources: the designated leaders, such as school principals; and the leaders who have no status by virtue of position, such as members of the community. All leaders need to see possibilities and pursue desirable outcomes. Leaders need passion and commitment, they need to be prepared to speak up and work hard for the greater social good. Part 4 explores the broad notion of leadership, focusing on the role of principal as the designated leader of a school, but encouraging participation in leadership by undesignated people who care and have insight, imagination and commitment. Unfortunately, there is no consensus on who the real leaders are in an organisation and even what leadership means. Should there be one designated leader or many in a distributed leadership structure? Do we have too many leaders confusing the issues or not enough leaders providing direction? Are we relying too much on leaders and not giving the followers a 115


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major role? And is leadership to be seen as strategic, entrepreneurial, transformational, ethical, situational, learning-centred, constructivist, stumbling, transitional or sustainable? Perhaps Dean Fink is right. When discussing designated leaders, he asserts that we are ‘making the business of leadership so complicated that we seem to need super heroes to run a school’ (Fink 2005, p. xiv). He believes that we are discouraging people who have the ability and passion to lead our schools. Fink expresses relief that in his experience he didn’t have to conform to what he calls the laundry lists of best practices in leadership or measure up to the latest leadership model ‘du jour’. When we had a stable society, we had a simple view of leadership— someone out in front leading us. As society developed and became complex, we saw the rise of the powerful leaders at the apex of a pyramid, supported by subordinate specialists who fed information and advice up to the top for action. With the coming of new forms of communication and a rapidly changing society, centralised bureaucracies moved too slowly and a new leadership model emerged where people did not have to climb a corporate ladder before they could exercise influence. Instead, individuals and small groups were able to compete successfully with the large corporations, accessing high-quality information from the Internet and other specialist agencies, and offering innovative and more relevant solutions. If we limit our discussions to schools, there is consensus that the school principal is the primary player, but not the only leader, in what happens in any school. The principal is in a central position to lead, to advise and to support or to hinder the initiatives of others, with knowledge, skills and resources. The principal is at the centre of a network of relationships with students, staff, parents, the school community and the wider community, and, as such, is aware of the big picture. The principal has been entrusted with the responsibility of educating tomorrow’s citizens and helping to establish a better society. In this, there is a moral responsibility, as well as a management one. At this time in history, when there are paradigm shifts in thinking about curriculum, pedagogy, assessment and structure, the principal needs either to be the chief cultural change agent or to appoint another to this role and support them in this task. The principal needs to not only address complex issues but use them to the advantage of the school. ‘The task that justifies the existence of all managers has to do with instability, irregularity, difference and disorder’ (Stacey 1996, p. xx). The human side of the principal’s leadership, the interaction between the leader and the role, needs to be understood and managed. At any one time, a principal is an expert and a learner, a leader and a follower, a counsellor and an authority figure, a facilitator and a driver, and an angel and a


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devil. Principals deal with this complexity and ambiguity in publicly accountable ways and are consequently vulnerable people. The principal does not and cannot work alone. Davies (2005) notes that: ‘leadership is not the provenance of one individual but of a group of people who provide leadership in the school’ (p. 2). Principals need to use the authority that goes with the role to support those staff who are leading from within the school. When I think about some of the great innovations in the schools where I was principal, my role was to find and support the movers and shakers. For them to be effective, they in turn needed to be assured of my trust, respect and support. Mintzberg (2004, p. 143) put it this way: ‘It is about energising other people to make better decisions and do better things … it is about releasing the positive energy that exists nat urally in people.’ Members of the community cannot be left out of the leadership equation. While they will be advised by the principal and the professional staff, community members need to ensure they are informed and take some responsibility for what is happening in schools. It is schools that will ultimately deliver both their students’ and their community’s future. Individual members of the community, not just their leaders, have a critical role in holding the principal and staff accountable, and in helping to create an acceptable future. Consider the story of a sinking rowing boat with four occupants. At one end is a couple that is relaxed, ignoring the precarious state of the boat and enjoying the scenery. At the other end of the boat is a couple that is far from relaxed and is furiously bailing out water that is pouring in through a hole in the boat. The relaxed couple is heard to say: ‘Aren’t you glad that the hole is in their end of the boat?’ As much as some would like to think otherwise, if there is a hole in the school boat, it is the problem of all involved, not just the principal or designated leaders. What is offered in this part is not a new theory, a rehash of an earlier one or a shopping list of best practices. Instead, there are 12 jousts to stir your thinking and prompt you into action. The goal is not alignment with some view, new or old, government or guru generated. Instead, what is sought is: • an informed community about leadership and their possible role in it • a spirited discussion about some of the leadership issues • a new recognition that leadership is not so complicated that you need a PhD from Harvard to lead • an acknowledgement of the complexity, ambiguity and conflicts inherent in leadership • a call for personal and community responsibility and passion.


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This is a metaphorical call to arms, to joust and to work for a better tomorrow. I want to fire the community into helping to set the strategic goals of schooling in a future-orientated way.

On the brink: Amanda McGraw Mary Mason’s directions always require you to fill in a bit yourself and to do some thinking. So I parked on the muddy hill across the road, partly pleased to be there on time and also wondering whether I’d found the right place. There was no visible house number and the street was a twisted trail of dirt disappearing into the gums of the Dandenong Ranges. Somehow I knew this was Mary’s new home as I wandered up the widening pathway and the house came into view. The house stood at the top of the rise, with windows like wide eyes overlooking the expanse of tangled garden and boxes and articles of old furniture piled high on the verandah. Mary and her husband had moved here some six months before, so it wasn’t as though the removal van had just departed. But that was Mary. She came to unpacking and organisation in spurts (there were more important things to take care of); so that some corners would be carefully arranged and others would be just as they fell. Her office is like that too: boxes of paper piled high, a desk littered with old agendas and reports, and then books sitting neatly on wooden shelves along with handmade vases and cards from friends. One thing is clear about the spaces that Mary inhabits: there is a lot going on in them. I’m constantly reminded of the importance of space: of the spaces we consciously and unconsciously create as individuals; and of the spaces that we create collaboratively that are at times harmonious and at other times tense with clutter and disjunction. Many of the principals I work with have no book shelves in their offices. Most have clear, neat desks. If they have art work, it is conservative. The walls of David Loader’s office were lined with books. His desk faced the window and in the central space was a coffee table and couches where people would gather to talk. I came into Mary’s largish living room, which had an open fire place that spat and crackled. The windows framed an impressive view of huge deciduous trees in autumn attire and distant Australian gums. Later that day I would experience the outside, more intimate, view of the trees and of the wild and soggy undergrowth that lay alongside twisted pathways, but first we would be inside, inside our own thoughts and shared conversation about ourselves and our profession. I was meeting Mary and David to talk about leadership in schools from a professional and personal point of view. I had a tape recorder because I had an idea of writing a piece for my doctorate that examined the emotional and relational realms of school leadership from a personal perspective. This


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conversation took place five years ago. I have the transcripts in front of me— a conversation frozen in time—and now five years older reading them with different understandings and intentions. I return to this afternoon with some of the same questions I had then: what motivates people like David and Mary? Why are some leaders so much more driven in their cause than others? How is their thinking different to other leaders I have worked with? What draws them together? And what draws me to them? Now, five years on, I have other questions related to our time spent at Wesley College, Melbourne, and why this time was such a pivotal learning experience for all of us. What did we learn there about teaching, learning, leadership and ourselves? I have known Mary for many years. We were brought together by our joint involvement in the Victorian Association for the Teaching of English— both passionate English teachers wanting to work with other equally committed educators. At that time, Mary was teaching English at Methodist Ladies’ College, Melbourne, and David was the principal there. I learned about David through Mary’s conversations and was fascinated by his style of leadership. When he and Mary moved to Wesley College and invited me to work there too, I jumped at the opportunity. I was employed at Wesley College as a learning specialist, although for some time my role didn’t have a name. I was to work directly with Mary to help to enhance teaching and learning within the school, and to work with teachers in classrooms. There was no job description, no clearly articulated expectations, no sense of what the role would look like on a day-today basis, or who else I would work directly with. There was space and freedom in this role that I had not experienced before in schools (I have worked in state and independent schools) or within the educational bureaucracy (I have worked in a number of bureaucratic roles both managing projects and consulting). Essentially, this was an exploratory role. What emerged through the experience would help to shape and define what happened. The role was envisioned by school leaders who value process and complex problem solving, who are prepared to take risks, and who can place trust and faith in the people who generate and reflect on experience. In a time when strategic and technical leadership was highly valued, these qualities were unusual to say the least. It was the exploratory, open nature of this experience that enabled me to learn so much. When you think about it, much of what we do as teachers and school leaders is framed by pre-existing structures, rigid expectations and habits of mind. Even now, these leadership qualities are rare. I have recently returned from Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, where I attended a three-day Learning Laboratory with school leaders from across America. I was interested and saddened to hear the experiences of principals and superintendents who, under the pressure of rigid outcomes and accountability measures,


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are working long hours, avoid delegating and, above all, fear personal failure. In one state, superintendents walk into classrooms and quickly evaluate teachers on a palm pilot with a set of rigid standards. There is no hope in an environment like this where people are working against one another, of collaboratively and honestly thinking through the very difficult challenges we face. At Wesley College I was both insider and outsider. I didn’t fit within any of the known and traditionally constructed roles that exist in schools, and so I moved in and out of classrooms and meetings as someone who was there and not there, understood and not understood. Now that I work as a researcher, I can see that in many ways I was researching. Being an outsider is not a comfortable position in a school setting and yet many people who work in schools feel marginalised: relief teachers, student teachers, principals and parents. Frequently, these people come to schools with new ideas, different experiences, a desire for change and, generally, the mainstream operators—the dominant culture—finds ways to make these people feel left out. Because we all fundamentally want to belong, outsiders find ways to fit in and before you know it those opportunities to do things differently are gone. In many ways, Mary and David were outsiders too. For me, the three years I worked with Mary and David at Wesley College were defining, inspiring and highly difficult. I came to understand the deeper levels of complexity inherent in schools, and how relational and emotional elements help to drive what happens between teachers and school leaders and, consequently, what happens for young people as learners. A vicious tension can be created when visionary leadership collides with the strongly held personal feelings of individuals and small groups whose sense of identity is enmeshed with the current culture. I experienced a great sense of excitement as we discovered so much about learning, a great sense of frustration that change did not happen easily and a good deal of angst as people I admired were hurt and publicly attacked. While I find change revitalising and a central component of continual learning, I’ve come to see that change in institutions like schools involves pain and humiliation. I have seen a number of school principals personally vilified by school council members and by teachers when comfort zones are challenged. School leaders need sturdy values and core beliefs to survive this abuse. They need to be clear in their own minds what it is that they stand for and it needs to be much more than striving for personal success. Only those who have a broader sense of good in mind and in heart, who have what Fullan would refer to as moral purpose, can lead transformational change. I think of our time at Wesley College as being on the brink. We were often tottering on the edge of something—at the point of discovery—in moments of both clarity and uncertainty, where deep connections are made,


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challenges identified and a sense of urgency is felt. The brink is almost a suspension in time, the holding blocks before you rush out of the stalls. It’s reliant on collaborative thinking and being in tune with those you work closely with. It’s a luxurious position that some leadership groups don’t enter into. Perhaps they aren’t willing to do the hard thinking to get there. Perhaps they aren’t willing to face themselves and what might happen if they fail. However, this time at Wesley College taught me how essential this state is. What were we trying to achieve at this school? Five years ago in Mary’s lounge room in the Dandenong Ranges, David spoke about his unhappiness with the way things are in schools. I am not happy with the way schools are and how education is. I think we have a long way to go. There’re a lot of students who are not finding the place stimulating, interesting, challenging and there are a lot of students who are not being successful. As a young person I always opposed the notion of radical change, I always thought that it should be incremental, but as I have got older I am beginning to think that something more dramatic has to happen … I think the Clunes experience, for example, was a dramatic change that caught the kids’ attention, got them involved. I think we need to look for ways in which we can draw students back into that budding process. And maybe we are looking for ways in which teachers can rediscover that they are learners and in catching that excitement, they may understand what the whole thing is about.

For both David and Mary, changing schools is about improving the way we live. Improving how we think and relate leads to better lives for all. The Clunes experience, which involves Year 9 students living for a term in a small country town, was constructed with these goals in mind. Both David and Mary are driven by a strong sense of what they feel is right and what is socially possible, rather than by personal fulfilment or ambition. Both felt marginalised in their childhood and the school system reinforced a sense of alienation. Being dissatisfied with the way things are and wanting change are deep rooted for both. So, too, is the excitement that comes through ideas: of playing with ideas, of talking about ideas, and seeing ideas take shape. Both are emotionally intuitive; they can be led by their emotions and have a strong desire to express their feelings openly—to be themselves. David spoke about supporting Mary as an English teacher at Methodist Ladies’ College, Melbourne, who ‘always began by being herself’. Mary had come to teaching from another profession. This, combined with her personal unhappiness with school as a student, meant that she had few ideas of how teachers were supposed to act. David, too, has a strong desire


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to be himself rather than play the role of principal. We spoke about Mary’s first public introduction to staff at Wesley College where she wore a suit and oddly matched coloured stockings. This became a talking point for some time at the school and teachers were clearly unsure of how to read this first visual representation of Mary. I didn’t do it to intentionally disrupt. I did it because I wanted to wear them. It was me and obviously I disrupted expectations. I have never been able to read the politics properly … You see I’ve always envied these people that can be something that they’re not in order to sort of manipulate those around them. I’ve never been able to do that … I quite like what I wear because I’m not even aware of it. I think a lot of what I do is instinctive. I just act.

Part of the power of leaders like Mary and David is that they are genuine and heart-felt in their beliefs and the way they express them. And yet these traits and ways of being are too often absent in our school leaders— and when they are truly there, the pervading culture of schooling seeks to diminish and destroy them. Five years ago, we talked about the importance of honest dialogue. David said, Honesty, the ability to be honest, is really critical. It’s one of the problems we have. We are all so precious, all so unstable, that we are not able to relax and become learners. We fear what we don’t know, rather than see that as an opportunity to learn. We become very defensive; it’s not okay to make a mistake.

What would honest, open dialogue about crucial matters related to teaching and learning between teachers and school leaders sound like? When would it take place? For how long? It would be dialogue that stumbles, like David’s notion of leadership. It would stumble always between the professional and the personal, between certainty and uncertainty, and between clarity and ambiguity. It would be like Mary’s house: wide-eyed with a view of the big picture, but also detailed and grounded; organised in part and also tangled and organic; always with an eye on improvement and growth; and with the heart at the centre.

Principal isolation My beginning as a school principal involved an unexpected metamorphosis from a teacher to a different animal—principal (Loader 1997). It had a lot


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in common with the transformations of tadpoles into frogs. I moved as a teacher from the comfortable community membership pool, where I coexisted happily with other teachers, to the rarefied atmospheres of poolside, where I sat alone as a principal, sometimes prominently perched on a rock and sometimes hidden under that rock for protection. As well as going through that metamorphosis, I found out another startling fact. Everything was my responsibility. To change analogies, suddenly it was my problem to stop the boat sinking, although I did have many knowledgeable voices telling me how to do this. It seemed to me that the rest of the community had moved to the other end of the boat and had left me to do the bailing. Consider my experience: aged 29, I found myself unexpectedly in charge of a school as principal after only seven years of teaching. I had taught for three and half years at a tough western Sydney government school—a good place to discover that not all students want to learn what I had to teach and that to survive the teacher had to be resourceful and resilient. Then I had two wonderful years in a Canadian senior high school, where the students taught me about the possibilities of a more equal teacher–student relationship that fostered personal growth as well as academic advancement. On return to Australia, I taught for one and half years at a prestigious Sydney private school, where I learnt that the extracurricular and the academic could be integrated to achieve a more vital learning environment. These were good and diverse trainings in curriculum, pedagogy and leadership. But they gave me no experience as a subject or house master, curriculum director or deputy head. However, at the Sydney private school I did instigate and take responsibility for a major new innovative program that demonstrated my leadership skills. This impressed my principal sufficiently for him to take the initiative and put my name forward for the principalship at a school in Orange, a position that I subsequently secured. Needless to say, for that principalship I was short on experience. While I had completed research into the principal as leader as part of my Master in Education at Sydney University, my main leading experience was as a director of a boys’ holiday camp. So it was not surprising that I came to the role idealistic and unprepared. A farewell gift from fellow teachers, as I left to take up my new appointment, should have warned me of what was to follow. I was given the book Dead souls by Gogol, with the inscription ‘Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely’. In my first year as principal, I wrote my first timetable, introduced myself to the school and local communities, went in search of new enrolments (as the school only had 103 students, but a staff that could have managed twice that number of students), struggled to understand financial


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balance sheets, learnt about boilers for the heating system and was introduced to the school’s milking herd, which included an aggressive bull. At the same time, I tried to change the curriculum, the pedagogy and the culture of both the day and boarding schools. I was fired with an idealist’s zeal, but my passion encountered significant resistance from many quarters, most particularly from a number of long serving members of staff. So, in the second year of my principalship, with enrolments growing and financial support promised from the Presbyterian Church, I focused on the teachers—aiming to achieve some alignment between their views and the school practices and policy. The alignment sought was to include agreement on student measurement, staff reward systems, and organisational structures, processes, culture and skills. At that time there was an established staff, some of whom had been at the school for more years than I had been alive. There were also some new appointments of mine, young recent graduates with new ideas. There was vigorous discussion about the way ahead. Most of this was on the run, between periods, over lunch or after school, and it was hard to get continuity to the discussions. There was also no time to build personal bridges with the staff, to understand the people as well as the educational challenge posed by a school struggling to stay viable. I wanted their involvement in the leadership of the school and I wanted to relate personally to staff members. I believed that hierarchical distance does not develop respect, but a more equal relationship encourages sharing, builds confidence and leads to better decisions that are owned by all parties. What do you do in such a situation? Well, I called a conference to confront the issues and wrote a paper that was to be the basis of our discussion. Over 30 years later the issues remain remarkably similar. Here is an abridged version of that paper in which I tried to specify my dilemmas and open them up for discussion. In my dealings with people, both individually and in groups, I am aware of a number of very real conflicts: (a) I am committed to people, yet I am also committed to an on-going school whose goals are not always people-orientated (b) I am committed to providing a quality education, and yet am very aware of rising school fees and the limited amount of financial resources available to the school … (d) I am committed to staff participation in decision making, yet recognise that in many important policy matters Council has final authority


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(e) I am committed to increasing student government, yet recognise that parents, too, must participate in the activity of decision-making (f) I am committed to law and order, yet recognise that personal growth, maturity and responsibility are not always the consequence of an enforced system (g) I am committed to an open, organic organisational structure, but recognise that some others prefer the traditional, bureaucratic model (h) I am committed to Christian values, but recognise that I live in a pluralistic society, perhaps even a secular community (i) I am human and have feelings, yet have to play the role of ‘the bloke in the principal’s office’ (Loader 1977, p. 42)

This was not quite Martin Luther nailing his 39 propositions to the church door, but it did have some similarities. The results were lively discussions within a significantly challenged community and these discussions continued for many years. Some issues were resolved, but others remained a problem for one side or the other and there were always at least two sides! An important outcome of my openness was the teaching community recognised that their voice would be heard and disagreements could be discussed. I felt more understood and less isolated as a result of the mutual relationships begun at this conference. A good example of this conflict occurred when the girls at the school sought to introduce trousers for winter wear. Parents reluctantly agreed and nominated a pair. However, the style was not popular with the students, so the nominated trousers were rejected. Because the students had instigated the issue, I felt that they should have the option to either accept the trousers offered or wait until next year and work with a parent committee to provide an alternative and acceptable style of trousers. The students decided to wait and the parents were unhappy that the students were given the choice. Parents felt they had been let down, that they were not getting my support. But students felt let down, too, because they had no winter trousers that year. Many of the issues of the 1970s remain unresolved today. Too few people—teachers, parents and members of the community—are assuming leadership. The person in the principal’s office, in general, still finds the task lonely. Until becoming a principal, I had assumed that principals chose to be aloof from their staff. On becoming a principal, I found that the staff pushed the principal away, denied them feelings and expected the principal to be their fairy godparent. Later I was to succumb to this expectation, as you will read in Being mistaken for God (p. 140).


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Reflecting on this staff conference, I can see that I probably could have done things better. But I feel that the conference initiative was correct. For staff, it gave them an open forum and an opportunity to lead. For the principal, it was important to confront differences, to acknowledge that we have no choice but to live with ambiguity and uncertainty, and that we are on a quest to find a better solution, not the perfect one. As for the culture, this was the beginning of a more collaborative culture, valuing people and their views, and offering opportunities to participate. Perfection might be possible if everything remains constant, but life is not like that; it is in a constant state of flux. Being open to opportunities, pushing for what you believe in, may not lead to a relaxing life but it is a constructive way forward.

Principals as change agents In 2005 I had the privilege of participating in workshops at a conference in Hong Kong, working with principals to change their roles from instructional leadership to cultural change leadership. During the conference, it struck me that whether in Hong Kong or Australia the principal’s role is remarkably similar and the principals themselves could be interchanged, albeit with a little cultural adjustment. At that time, the Hong Kong government was introducing fundamental changes to their school system. These included: a new curriculum with a core and electives that needed to be managed; a change from a focus on teaching to learning, including more emphasis on experiential learning; the introduction of some school-based assessment; and a new structure that had one less year for secondary schooling and one more year for university. Taken together, these changes represented a paradigm shift in thinking about curriculum, pedagogy, assessment and structure. The principals were expected to lead their communities in adopting these changes, so the Hong Kong workshops were aimed at helping principals to change their roles from being experts in instruction to being experts in leading and managing paradigm shifts in community thinking. The titles we use indicate how we see ourselves and are seen by others. In the UK, the principal is known as the headteacher, a title that emphasises the instructional leadership role. In Australia, the title principal is most commonly used and it conveys first in rank or importance. At the conference in Hong Kong, school leader was the title used, but it was to include school leaders other than the principal reflecting a new emphasis on leadership teams. Given that today schools are being asked to make some big changes in how they function, including building a new school culture, then perhaps the school principal needs a new name to convey this new primary


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role. Might a more appropriate title for principals be chief change agent (CCA)? Okay, it’s not very original, but it is at least better than chief executive officer (CEO), which reflects the corporate thrust into schools. A change of title, like that of CCA, conveys to all that there is a new role being played. In the case of CCA, it highlights the new responsibilities of the principal for leading the fundamental transformations in the learning and teaching cultures of schools. The school community looks to the principal to interpret what is happening in society and in the school, to understand new research data and trends in educational thinking, and to interpret all of this in a relevant and practical way. The principal, therefore, needs to be sophisticated in conceptual thinking, to able to identify and address the core issues, and to focus the community’s attention on the fundamentals. As well, the principal needs to be skilled in dealing with people, as any transformation will only come through people. Michael Fullan (2002) refers to research into highly effective principals. This research identified 13 common characteristics across four domains: driving school improvement; delivering through people; building commitment; and creating an educational vision. The four domains suggest that for principals to be effective, their main role needs to be broader than instruction; principals should be cultural change agents concerned with futures, analytical thinking, coherence-making and relationship building. According to Fullan (2002), ‘developing relationships and team building is the most difficult skill set’. In his view, the goal is to have ‘emotionally intelligent leaders and emotionally intelligent organisations’. Change involves taking people out of their comfort zones and so it is not surprising that change generates emotions. Leaders need to be sensitive to all those with whom they work. It is critical that leaders are aware of their own emotional makeup, so that they can handle themselves better in the web of complex and emotional relationships that precede and follow change. If principals are to deliver on fundamental changes in the culture of schools, they need to be emotionally sensitive to self and others, leading all with hope, energy and moral purpose. Fullan cites this moral purpose as an important feature of effective leadership. He defines moral purpose as ‘acting with the intention of making a positive difference in the (social) environment’ (2002). The principals that we have least respect for are those who are in the job primarily for their personal glory. Being a principal is a high calling, a prophetic role in the biblical sense, where you are leading a community forward. Acting with moral purpose occurs when schools share their knowledge and skills freely, and do not close their doors to sharing their knowledge with other schools. We want other students and schools to benefit, not just students in our own school!


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Society is used to the role of the didactic teacher communicating knowledge, training students and driving sometimes reluctant learners to greater endeavours. On the other hand, society is sceptical in general about ideas such as the self-directed learner, whether it is a student, an employee or even a principal. So there is resistance to ideas such as changing the paradigm of schools from teaching institutions to learning communities. But it can be done and Hong Kong is showing the way. The principal as a chief change agent has a pivotal role in forming and selling the new school culture.

Transitional leadership Principals as leaders can become somewhat self-obsessed, feeling their isolation, while trying to lead the school to a new place. But there may be others in the school community whose reactions need to be considered and who may also be feeling isolated, alienated from the leadership and from the school community. These fellow travellers are being asked by the leaders to transition from where they are now to someplace new, which may not be as attractive to them as their present situation. Good leadership should address their transitions while driving reform, managing scarce resources and achieving the desired results. Sporting wisdom maintains that you should keep your eye on the ball and not on the player. But in real life, a focus on the people playing the game is more appropriate than a single-minded commitment to an impersonal goal. Leadership is more than a technical process; it is a people business. The magnitude of these personal transitions was brought home to me in the unusual setting of a dreaming workshop. This workshop consisted of a group of like-minded people who shared a research interest in exploring the psychoanalytical aspects of leadership and living through social dreaming. In a dreaming workshop, dreams are shared and discussed by members of the group. At a recent dreaming workshop, the discussion of our dreams had stimulated confessions and reflections on our life transitions. For some it was about family—their personal circumstances changing with a new child, a life-threatening illness or a divorce—and for others it was work related—impossible goals imposed, changing jobs or having no job. All of these transitions involved stress and the magnitude of this stress surprised me. Outwardly, we all gave the impression that we were sailing on a luxury liner on a smooth ocean to a greatly desired destination, but the inner reality was that we were struggling to stay afloat on a slippery log on a fast flowing river to an uncertain conclusion. Perhaps the reason that some leaders do not focus on the personal transitions of their staff is because they are not emotionally aware of their own transitions. I can think of times when this was true for me. It is hard to


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acknowledge uncertainties about decisions and destinations that you don’t have all the answers to and admit to the accompanying stress you feel. With hindsight I can see that the inability to acknowledge my shortcomings and fears is not only a deficit for me, but it also makes me blind or insensitive to the needs of others. The dreaming workshop helped me see that too often in the past my focus had been on an external goal and not on the personal transitions that needed to be made to achieve that goal. The workshop freed all of us to talk about how we had been feeling while pursuing our goals and enabled us to find insight into the necessary personal changes each required. What I’d undervalued in my pursuit of goals had been the vital in-between steps, the human element in the process. These intermediary steps will vary depending on the goal. For example, if the problem is about leaving or losing a job, we need to first come to grips with leaving the last position we held, and the people and the support the job gave. Grieving is an important process that, if omitted, comes back to haunt us later. Similarly, learning from our mistakes is critical, if we’re to make a success of our next job. But do we want another job? Surely this is a time for reflection and exploration, and being unemployed may focus the mind in ways not otherwise possible. There are many more personal questions to be asked and answered about any change, particularly the implications for those close to us, as we do not live in isolation. Having done all of this, we are in a position to make the emotional and intellectual transition to the next stage. Finally we can think strategically, entrepreneurially, transformationally, etc. Transitional leadership shifts the leadership focus to the people and their transitions, the changes they are making and the ones they have yet to make. While holding firm to the organisational goal, say, the introduction of a new workplace agreement, the feelings and situations of the people involved need to be fully understood and appreciated. As teachers, we know that readiness is an important part of learning. If the members of staff are focusing on their personal situations, then the larger organisational goal will not be a priority for them. Similarly, we know from teaching that personal knowledge is built on prior knowledge. It is hard to teach about gears if students do not understand cogs. So, it is critical to start from where the people are now. How can a leader hope to successfully implement a new workplace agreement, if that leader does not understand the personal implications of that agreement for themself and for those who will be covered by it? I like to think of leadership as fundamentally an imaginative act of hope that is delivered for and through persistent, imaginative and courageous people. As I reflect on my days as a principal, I think about how I could have been a more effective leader if I had better understood my transitions,


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articularly the loneliness that I felt as a principal. Then I would have better p understood the transitions of others. I needed to spend more time and use more school resources acknowledging and supporting those who were required to make changes in their personal situations. How many conflicts could have been avoided, how many hours saved if I had begun with exploring where the staff members were in their thinking? Whether the task was to write student reports in a new way or to appraise staff members, it necessitated members of the community making significant changes to their practices. Any change had to be a win-win result for all involved, if we were to move forward. Inevitably this involvement would have meant a slower takeup of an idea, but the translation of this to a delivered outcome would not necessarily have been slower. By giving more attention to the personal issues, I may have avoided the flagging morale and the white-anting by disgruntled staff that sometimes followed changes I had instigated. Leadership needs to be informed, not just in a technical sense, but in a deeply personal way. This is unlikely to happen if the leaders themselves are unaware of their emotions, let alone the emotions of those whom they would lead. The dreaming workshop helped me to better understand transitions. Of course, there are other ways to achieve the same outcome such as from a critical friend or a professional mentor or coach. It is critical that schools have leaders who consider carefully the personal transitions of all involved.

We need principals in schools Of the many serious challenges to the effective leadership of schools, one suggestion that needs refuting is the possibility that schools can be administered from a central office with no in-school principal. I had reason to reflect on the principal’s role when Steve Holden (2005, p. 60), in a tongue-in-cheek way, wrote about the purported launch in Australia of a new for-profit group of private schools to be registered on the stock exchange as Education Inc. As he pointed out, the USA has the Edison schools, Britain is about to have Cognita founded by Chris Woodhead, and so why not an Australian version? I don’t have a problem per se with for-profit schools, as so many of us as teachers and principals have made our living from schools. But I do have a problem if the way they intend to make financial savings for personal benefit is at the expense of students, for example, by not having an in-school principal. How can a school function effectively without an in-school principal? There are some who already believe that many schools today have ineffectual principals. Given their irrelevance to the community, therefore perhaps the principal could be omitted? I have heard it said by a critical


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staff member: ‘I am not sure we have a principal. Yes, I have read his memos telling me what to do. Yes, I see him through the window sitting at his computer, but I have never seen him in the staffroom or in the schoolyards. Maybe what I’m seeing is only a cardboard replica of a principal!’ I’ve listened to parents complain about their absent principal who prefers to work outside the school and who is unavailable for discussion about their children. On the other hand, I’ve heard a disgruntled principal, after a difficult meeting with her school board, assert that the school board does not want a principal: ‘They think they know all about schools and want to run the school themselves. All they need is a compliant secretary to do their bidding!’ The fact that some principals may be invisible, absent or not needed does not mean that in-school principals are irrelevant. I believe that each school needs in-school management of both change and people. How can you achieve a culture that is positive, affirming and focused without on-site leadership? A central office cannot micro-manage a school culture, nor effectively implement quality programs that meet local needs. In my view, the on-site management of under-performing staff, the encouragement and support of the staff achievers, and the general management of the ongoing development of people and programs is what will deliver a better school. Research supports this view. According to Zbar and Mackay (2003): Substantial research exists to show that leadership has a profound influence on organisational performance and, at the school level, principals exercise a measurable effect on school effectiveness, school improvement and school achievement.

It was as long ago as 1988 that Brian Caldwell and Jim Spinks published The self-managing school, where they argued for more autonomy for each school and, therefore, more authority to the in-school leadership. They maintained that publicly funded schools could not be effectively directed from the centre with a complex arrangement of roles and responsibilities. They argued for ‘largely’ self-managing schools with more authority, not less, being given to the in-school principal and staff. They argued that the ongoing debate should not be about whether a school could manage itself, but about how it is to be managed and about the extent that the school would be supported by a framework of policies and priorities set at the system level. It is important to remember that there is no single ‘best’ school that will suit all and that can be mandated and delivered from the centre. In-school leadership has to design a school for the community it serves. By giving more authority to in-school leadership, we are seeing schools breaking the mould of look-alike comprehensive schools (see Dare


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we allow schools to be different?, p. 75) and differentiating themselves from neighbouring schools by organisation, curriculum and culture. The success of the specialist school movement in Britain has been noted and Australia is taking tentative steps in the same direction. But we need to go beyond accepting differences between schools to accepting and using difference for educational purposes within schools. Roland Barth wants children to attend ‘schools where differences were looked for, attended to, and celebrated as good news, as opportunities for learning’ (1990, p. 168). Barth asks an important question: how can we ‘make conscious deliberate use of differences in social class, gender, age, ability, race and interests as resources for learning?’ (1990, p. 168). Clearly, addressing difference between or in schools could not be achieved if we did not have in-school leadership. Within a good school you will find a collegial, collaborative community that can take authority for itself. Such a community will show respect for its members and for each other. When this is achieved, the other critical relationships with students, parents and the community are more likely to be managed effectively. But the difficulty of managing such a school community is not always appreciated and thus often underestimated. Michael Fullan describes the complex nature of school dynamics. A school, he says, consists of ‘webs of non-linear feedback loops connected to other people and organisations (its environments) by webs of non-linear feedback loops … all operating in stable and unstable equilibrium’ (1999, p. 4). There is one further complicating fact and that is the Australian culture, which is individualistic and materialistic (see School obesity, p. 69). Given such com plexity, in-school leadership is critical. Stacey (1996) captures the complexity of the task and need for inschool creativity in leadership: The real management task is that of coping and even using unpredictability, clashing counter cultures, dissensus, contention, conflict, and inconsistency. In short, the task that justifies the existence of all managers has to do with instability, irregularity, difference and disorder. (p. xix)

If we’re to have Education Inc., then please, please let it be with inschool principals.

Principal dreams The commencement of a new school year is a wonderful time to dream. Without the accumulated baggage of the past year, there are fresh opportunities for new beginnings.


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I remember vividly many new beginnings, including my first days back at school as a student after the long Christmas holidays. At that time, my senses were so heightened that even today I can still remember the smell of the new textbooks, the feeling of optimism and commitment with which I began writing on the first pages of new exercise books and the excitement of renewing old friendships. But I also remember how easy it was to lose my way, to follow trails that led nowhere and to fall behind in the essentials. So what should get priority at the beginning of a new year? I would put at the top of the list a commitment to dream and then to pursue those dreams. Other people’s dreams will not sustain you—at least not in the long term. It was Jean-Paul Sartre who argued that passion needs to precede choice and then action will follow. If we have no vision of what our future could be, the risk is that we might find our lives defined by others and find ourselves confined to their vision of the world. Look where the political vision of others has taken us recently! But equally frightening is when we allow ourselves to be imprisoned by social conformity and an unquestioning acceptance of what exists, rather than what could be. For some people, there is no choice because they have not developed a way of seeing the choice. The poet William Blake in his poem London captures this self-limiting behaviour in three powerfully emotive words: ‘Mind forged manacles’ (Blake 1827 cited in Erdman 1982). But for others there is a comfort factor that limits their choice, and this is discussed in Prisons we choose to live inside, a book of essays by Doris Lessing (1991). In his wonderful book, The alchemist, Paulo Coelho argues that ‘It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting’ (1994, p. 11). After all, it is not the salary that makes us jump out of bed to go to work, is it? Coelho also reminds his readers that ‘wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure’ (1994, p. 122). If our heart is not in something, then there is little satisfaction in the task. Charles Handy (1994) encourages us to search out a dream for ourselves: We cannot wait for great visions from great people, for they are in short supply at the end of history. It is up to us to light our own small fires in the darkness. (p. 271)

It is unfortunately true that most attempts at reform in schools have come from outside the school by people imposing a structure, a curriculum or a benchmark. It is time for those within to take responsibility for change. Better schools will only come when those in schools dare to have dreams


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and work to make them a reality, but this takes courage and for most of us such courage does not come easily. Tim Hawkes, principal of The King’s School, Parramatta, NSW, put it succinctly (personal communication 2004): ‘Managers generally like order, whereas a leader may create chaos, can encourage revolution and disturb with new possibilities.’ Leadership does involve taking others, as well as ourselves, out of the comfort zone and this is only possible if we all are able to share an identified dream and have the courage to pursue it. One person with both a dream and courage was Martin Luther King Jr (1968). Many will recall in his famous speech the ‘dream that one day, this nation will rise up’ (1963). Whether you are a teacher or school leader, it’s not enough just to have a dream, you need to be able to share it and invite others to own it too. The remarkable achievement of Martin Luther King Jr was that he was able to share his dream and inspire others to join him in its pursuit. There is only one thing worse than a person who does not have a dream and that is the person who imposes their dream on another against their will! However, the dream—as important as it is—should not be an end in itself. The first dream pushes us forward until the next dream appears and takes us further. Unlike Isaac Asimov with his mathematics of psycho history, in that wonderful foundation trilogy (Foundation, Foundation and empire and Second foundation), we cannot provide a definitive plan for the long-term future. The future remains a mystery to us and what we can do is prepare for only the near future. We think of school refusal as a description that is applied only to students who don’t want to attend school, but it could equally apply to teachers and school leaders who accept other people’s dreams and, therefore, refuse to enter into the challenge of pursuing their own. In essence, effective leadership is that which follows from your inner life, from your personal vision, from your way of being and acting and from your beliefs. I would like to challenge you to dare to dream of a better workplace and a better world. That dream could then be translated into some vision of what you would like to achieve this year. Of course, if the vision is to be an actuality, then some reality-checking is necessary. What might be the impact of your vision on family and on those you work with? Discuss the dream with them and this may lead to some redrafting of your ideas. Then a written statement of this can be developed and placed somewhere prominent where you can be reminded of it daily. It’s important this statement is not like those New Year’s resolutions made in a state of euphoria that are unattainable amidst the hurly burly of everyday necessities. Yes, it may be easier to drift into a new year, but to really achieve a new beginning, some principal dreaming is necessary.


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Stumbling forward It is considered gospel that you need a vision to take yourself forward. For example, Ken Blanchard and Jesse Stone wrote the paper: ‘The vision thing: Without it you’ll never be a world-class organisation’ (2004). Their compelling vision model has three elements: • A significant purpose • A picture of the future • Clear values. I have no problem with the need for such a vision. In fact, without a personal vision we probably wouldn’t get out of bed each morning. But what is the next step after identifying your vision? A strategic plan is a good idea. But don’t be limited by this. The future is not always evident. What I foresaw for the future was … a picture of what only could be an imagined past. [The future] in my imaginings … was already gone. (Banville 2005, p. 96)

And the unexpected often opens up new opportunities and possibilities. Leadership is about always being watchful, looking for attractive destinations, avoiding any obstacles and considering new trails. When in my role as a school principal, I described my leadership style as ‘stumbling’ (Loader 1997, pp. 82–96). I first presented this idea at a sem inar at the University of Alberta. My task at the seminar was to describe how personal computing (notebooks) became adopted as a policy at Methodist Ladies’ College, Melbourne, in 1990. The university academic staff tried to suggest a different, more in control adjective than stumbling. They suggested entrepreneurial, responsive, and learning-centred. Of course, a stumbling leadership can be all of these things as well, but the essence of it is the unexpected nature of the discovery. The university staff members were uncomfortable with such a messy description of leadership, but I contended that leadership, as exercised in the real world, is messy—in that it is nonlinear, intuitive, irregular, responsive and unpredictable. While leaders should plan in advance strategically and in detail, they need to be open to new possibilities and not follow the prepared plan with blinkered eyes. Now the word stumble can mean flounder, blunder, lurch or almost fall. With the introduction of compulsory notebooks at Methodist Ladies’ College, Melbourne, we managed all of these. But by stumbling I mean that as you venture forth into the unknown, you might trip over something unexpected, maybe even fall over it. But the situation does not end there. Having fallen you don’t lie passively or angrily, perhaps blaming others for


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what you tripped over—for the accident. You get up and reflect on this fall. If in this reflection there is a glimpse of some new possibility and an outcome follows that capitalises on that stumble, then stumbling leadership has occurred. The stumble process is to venture out, stumble, reflect, glimpse a new opportunity and then take considered action. My view is that many new and valuable initiatives have come as a result of stumbles. Consider seemingly happy accidents like Newton and the apple or Fleming and penicillin. They happened because someone was alert, attending to chance events, seeing possibilities. Think about your best new initiative. Did the inspiration come as a result of something that you happened to chance on? Intuitively, you may have seen a possibility and then, of course, the rational planning self came into action. While some may have a well-developed rational mind, mine operates first and foremost intuitively and the rational is left to work very hard to catch up. Shelley, in A defence of poetry (1914), reminds us that we need to value and nurture our imagination; it is key to our stumbling ability: Reason is the enumeration of qualities already known; imagination is the perception of the value of these qualities, both separately and as a whole … Reason is to imagination as the instrument to the agent, as the body to the spirit, as the shadow to the substance.

As with learning basics, good stumbling has its three Rs, in this case, relevance, risk and responsibility. Genuine leadership involves taking risks, grappling with uncertainty, containing contradictory information, ensuring relevance, taking action under ambiguous conditions and accepting responsibility. Once we have seen an opportunity, for that stumbling opportunity to become leadership, there must be follow-up action. In this follow up, there may be sins of omission and commission. I am guilty of both of these, but perhaps less guilty when it comes to omission—as I am committed to moving forward, making decisions and accepting responsibility. The stumble also needs to be compatible with our picture of the future and fit our educational purposes. After the stumble, those important questions of why and what follow, questions that are not just important to students, but equally vital to us in our roles of learner and leader. These questions are an essential part of our leadership tool kit. We need to be modelling a culture of inquiry and building a community of learners. The stumbling is not about accepting what comes, but of using what comes to achieve your vision. It is important to actively choose a future, not just accept what is being given to us or, even worse, doing what we think people are telling us to do. Capitalise on the unexpected to achieve your goals!


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Principal: Powerful or powerless? To some on the outside looking in, principals are powerful people, but discussions with them reveal their idealism and dedication to their students and school leaves them feeling vulnerable. Achievements do not come easily and they are constantly challenged, not always supported and always vulnerable. While working in the UK National College of School Leadership (NCSL) during 2003, I asked a group of principals (called headteachers in the UK) from very different schools whether they had the flexibility to lead and manage creatively (Loader 2004). This was a scoping study to identify future areas for exploration. Of the nine principals interviewed, there was no universal agreement. Asked if they felt free to innovate, there were three confident yes responses, three clear no answers and three in between. Those who felt that they could not innovate nominated government, public examinations, school inspectors, lack of funds, the national curriculum and accountability requirements as blockages. All were aware that as principals they were vulnerable to challenge on many fronts. In the UK, there is clear, formal, central encouragement for limited in-school innovation, such as in the government document Transforming secondary education. There is also practical encouragement through incentive grants; the establishment of an Innovation Unit; school networks focused on encouraging innovation; and a commitment to delivering a different future rather than replicating the past. But at the school level, my research (Loader 2004) and a review (Hargreaves 2003) revealed that principals did not feel encouraged to innovate. Some of the regulators in government have suggested that the lack of freedom is all in the minds of principals. The concept of the institution in the mind suggests these principals may in their mind be unintentionally giving greater and more negative power than actually exists to the broader school system. If this lack of freedom exists only in the mind, then it is broadly based in lots of minds. Two hundred principals, who are members of the NCSL’s Leadership Network, believe they are constrained and discouraged from being entrepreneurial because of the government account ability requirements. In ‘A letter to the minister’ (Tarleton & Williams 2003), these principals described ‘a risk averse culture where accountability still stood in the way of radical change’. These 200 UK principals take the view that a more favourable climate is necessary before they will be confident enough to undertake significant innovations in their schools. Bureaucracies, regardless of their rhetoric, have never been too keen to give over their authority. At the same time, it has always been difficult to clarify the exact extent to which a specific bureaucracy truly wants


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free-thinking individuals. The result is an unsatisfactory compromise, with principals required to follow specific directions with limited scope for autonomous action. In both the UK and Australia, there are contradictory messages being delivered to principals. In an insightful book, Education epidemic, David Hargreaves argues: ‘Innovation is a delicate plant, which thrives in a favourable climate’ (2003, p. 33). It involves risk taking and that’s not easily achieved when principals feel they are under close scrutiny with fearful accountability consequences, such as public criticism and the possible loss of employment. Hargreaves also talks about a blame culture that has created a feeling of resentful dependency in principals. Such a culture strangles innovation and is characterised by principals playing it safe. Australian governments have been looking favourably at what is happening in the UK. All governments have an inclination towards intervention, command and control, so it’s likely that in Australia we’ll have more government interventions and new central controls. But are these in the best interests of schools and their students? The evidence from the UK is that such interventions have damaged trust, leaving principals feeling vulnerable, unsupported and less powerful as leaders. As a result, responsiveness to local conditions and new leadership initiatives is limited. Governments typically prefer one form of organisation, and tend to impose and replicate it, but what we need are systems that challenge and motivate all principals to take responsibility, to be focused on quality in their schools, to be innovative in the context of the unique challenges within their schools. For this to happen, we need a culture that minimises blame so that principals don’t play it safe by replicating what everyone else is doing. I believe that Australian students would benefit from a system that encourages revolution in thought and practice by those who lead schools. Yes, this is probably a chaotic model. However, as Hargreaves (2003) reminds us, while all principals and schools to some degree work alone, they are part of a creative professional collective that will in the end deliver. For Hargreaves, the way forward is for schools to copy Linux’s process of development, a free Unix-type operating system for computers. The Linux source code was made available free and developers around the world have built from this an alternative to the proprietary Unix and Microsoft operating systems. Hargreaves believes that schools could use this as a model. Linux was: constructed at an incredible pace by a community resembling a babbling bazaar of different agendas and approaches and consisting of many users who were recruited as fellow builders. (2003, p. 55)

To many this is a chaotic model. Yet, it was effective as a process of harnessing the energy, knowledge and skills of many to deliver an effective


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and flexible operating system. It is for this reason that we need empowered principals in our schools that are not risk averse. Individually, they each contribute by trying new ways of operating, but if their combined initiatives are brought together, then perhaps a new whole may emerge.

Risky business Leadership entails taking responsibility. The good news for stressed principals (at least for those who do not have tendencies to paranoia) is that they have people with whom to share this responsibility. When I was a principal, I was all too aware of my duty of care for students, particularly when it came to safety in water activities and on excursions. I watched as fellow principals dealt with serious incidents, sometimes even involving the death of a student, and prayed that this would never happen to me. I assumed that responsibility for students was the principal’s burden—that the buck stopped at my door! My experience of principalship in the 1970s and 1980s was that the school board would be happy if all went well, but if there were problems, then I was in trouble. Come the 1990s, school boards were asking principals specific questions about danger—like the safety of students on buses, should there be a crash. The board was beginning to take responsibility for students, delegating to the principal the responsibility to address this and report back. It was hard not to feel a little resentful that the board was beginning to interfere in the running of the school, because the changing role of school board directors was not understood. In some of my early responses to risk, I introduced a lot of rules and procedures that also generated staff resistance. I remember a senior staff member confronting me: ‘I wanted to take my Year 12 students across the road to a café for an informal discussion, but was told that I needed a school exit letter signed by their parents, a mobile telephone and a medical kit. This is ridiculous! The students will suffer because I refuse to do this!’ By the late 1990s and into the new century, the questions from the board had become broader. Rather than asking ‘What are you doing about this?’, the question now was ‘Would you kindly provide a risk assessment of all that is happening in the school, together with your plans for managing this?’ A new focus at board meetings and new skills for me to learn, included risk appetite, risk profiles, risk mitigation, disaster planning and a new accountability not just for the past but for the future. Attendance at an Australian Institute of Company Directors course helped me to better understand why school board directors were behaving differently. Directors are individually and collectively being held responsible for what happens in the enterprise which they govern! Being a board member


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is a serious undertaking requiring not just commitment but professional expertise in addressing compliance, strategy and policy, with the triple bottom line of social, environmental and financial accountability. To fail in your responsibilities as a board director has serious consequences. Board directors have become aware of this responsibility following significant company failures that led to the directors of the company being held accountable and sued. One such well-publicised failure by a not-forprofit community service organisation was by the National Safety Council of Australia (Victoria). This small emergency services company grew into a large organisation offering diverse emergency services, including air ambulance, and search and rescue. When it collapsed in 1989, the Chairman of the Board was found personally liable for $96.7 million while its nine directors were sued for an undisclosed amount. Recently, the consequences have moved from fines to the possibility of jail for directors! Today, we have industrial manslaughter or reckless conduct causing death and a crimes bill being considered that would make directors personally liable for such a crime. The onus is firmly on boards and their directors to establish a sound system of risk oversight, and management and internal control. There is good news in this for principals. Risk is no longer solely the principal’s responsibility, if it ever was. It is now shared with board members. One worrying consequence of this for some principals is that board members will be looking over the principal’s shoulders. Such close super vision, and perhaps interference, in school management may be a contributor to the short average stay (at less than three and a half years), of principals in private schools in Australia. Another consequence is that a paranoid principal might try to conceal what is happening, hiding the warning signs about possible disasters and missing the significant assistance that directors might be able to give. The point is that it’s not about removing risks, because everything we do, like crossing the road, travelling in a car or taking a bus, is inherently risky. Rather, it’s about knowing what the risks are, assessing them with the board and developing management plans to deal with foreseeable eventual ities. For school leaders, that’s both risk management and risky management!

Being mistaken for God ‘Being mistaken for God’ is a heading from Creating a positive school culture, which made me read further: ‘People almost expect the school principal to supply them with everything they need … I realised that they wanted me to be God. I thought, “Oh, I didn’t apply for that job. I think the position is already filled.” ’ (Beaudoin & Taylor 2004, p. 4).


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I can identify with that feeling. It always amazed me that no matter how big the school some parents were not happy until they had been to the top. And I am not necessarily talking about big problems; it could be that their child has lost a personal item, such as a piece of clothing! Those same parents would never consider asking the CEO of a similar sized business to address a minor problem, yet asking a principal to find a missing shoe or blazer is common. This thinking that the principal can and should solve each problem can trap the principal into an impossible role. As a principal, you may know that you cannot solve all the problems, know all the answers, control everything, predict the future and never make mistakes, but you still probably feel under pressure to be what you cannot be. In the past, this may have led to principals assuming an autocratic rule. Today, it seems to lead to many principals feeling a sense of failure, possibly contributing to their short stay in the role. The degree to which a principal can influence curriculum, students, teachers, budgets or parents is limited. While the principal does have some power over all of these and can influence for good or bad, they are one of many players in an unfolding story. An unsettling fact is that principals are directly accountable to a large number of people and, worse, these accountabilities could be in conflict. An ex-student might want a good rowing result, a parent might want good university entrance scores, a teacher might want a lighter workload, a student might want more freedom, the community might want better student dress, the school governor might want an improved budget performance and the government might want a flagpole. While principals have always understood the duty of care for their students, our current litigious society adds a new dimension. Today, the aggrieved consumer can use the courts and the media to good effect to achieve their goals. The effect? Many principals have become trapped by the expectations of their demanding communities, and have succumbed to the desire to deliver what everyone wants and to do this on the first attempt. A mistake or a near miss is not good enough. It is perfection that they expect from themselves. These high expectations are not only a dreadful burden but also limit principals’ vision. I saw this closing down by principals in the UK during 2003 (Loader 2004); their fear of failure made them conservative. According to popular wisdom, a professional does not make mistakes. But the insurance companies know better, as their increasingly expensive premiums reveal! The absence of perfection needs not be a deficit for a principal. After all, we learn by reflecting on mistakes. But, unfortunately, openness to mistakes is a rare phenomenon in most organisations.


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Principals are both leaders and followers, and the successful principal knows which role to play at any one time. As leaders, they often need to lead a community out of a relatively tranquil state into one that creates feelings of anxiety and then to support that community as its members find the courage to move down this new path. This is all very well, but who will support the leaders as their confidence ebbs and flows? The reality is that principals today are not powerful and omniscient leaders, but vulnerable professionals trying to do their jobs. As followers, principals need to acknowledge that others also lead and that the initiatives of others need to be acknowledged and supported. Perhaps 90 per cent of the time the principal needs to be a follower and that may take more courage than being personally out front. While I’ve singled out the principal here, I could have been talking as easily about a teacher, a parent or a spouse. The analysis applies equally to all. Regardless of how others would deify you, you are a vulnerable person (who will make mistakes) working in conjunction with other vulnerable people to deliver the best outcomes possible.

Being human: A leader’s weakness or strength? In our leadership roles, we want to be seen as a confident person in a professional suit and not the homebody in frayed pyjamas. We want to be seen to be in control of our lives and professional in the way we undertake tasks. To be seen otherwise, according to conventional theory, is dangerous to our continuing career. Implicit in this loss of control is the fear of making mistakes. I would like briefly to explore this interaction between the person and the role. Is humanness in a leader’s behaviour a strength or a weakness? I continue to be surprised as to how my peers regard me. Some time ago I was reminiscing with colleagues about one of those personal experiences that you don’t forget. I told them about how I had absent-mindedly thrown $50 into one of those deep, public rubbish bins, thinking that I was throwing in an old shopping list. (This was in 1995. Today that $50 would be worth at least $100!) Twenty metres later I realised my mistake and retraced my steps. The bin was in a major street, busy with traffic and, even worse, full of students from my school. I waited five minutes (although it seemed an hour) for the street to empty, trying to be as inconspicuous as I could as I loitered near the rubbish bin. I looked down into the bin, but couldn’t see my $50 note. It was clear that I would have to fossick a little in the bin to retrieve my money. Looking up, I saw a tram, full of students, coming towards me. I walked five metres from the rubbish bin and waited my chance to return.


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In telling this story, my first surprise was that my peers believed that I would have dived into the bin and retrieved that money. I didn’t manage that! The second surprise was that my peers saw me as so comfortable in being myself and able to speak my mind. They had experienced this in my willingness to take up unpopular political positions and publicly argue for them. Speaking for students, schools and political causes I can manage, but to speak up for myself is much harder. But I am working at it! Principals are often stereotyped as roaring confident lions, when a more accurate image might be that of a tentative, vulnerable cub. One principal friend, encouraged to be honest by reading my book The inner principal (1997) sent me an email in which he said: ‘Each day I feel that I have to win the right to be the principal again. It is not what I have achieved; I have to do it again and again without mistakes.’ To accept the mantle of principal, it seems that you have to forgo personal foibles. The title of principal, in my experience, has detracted from my ability to be myself. I had to be in role and many of those I worked with preferred it if the real David was not too visible. I accepted this and so I believed that the school community did not want its principal fossicking in rubbish bins. I, therefore, concluded that David could not either. And so I reluctantly walked away without my $50. As leaders within schools, we experience pressures that we have to get it right and only then can we be seen as effective leaders. Where do these pressures come from? While a few principals develop fantasies of omniscience—that they will become all-knowing and able to solve all problems—most principals are simply reflecting the projected expectations of staff, students and parents when they try to solve everyone’s problems. Whatever the source, seeing the world this way is not helpful. An unfortunate consequence is that leaders are forced to defend their mistakes and, worse, some do this by projecting the responsibility for failure onto others. There is an alternative scenario to this defensive behaviour: to admit to our mistakes and, in so doing, open ourselves to the possibility of new learning, growth and opportunity. It is only if we are open and honest, and if we learn to live with ambiguity, that our leadership skills develop and we grow as respected, supportive and encouraging leaders within interdependent teams. It is unfortunate that we seem to derive our self-esteem from knowing as opposed to learning. Why do we confront learning opportunities with fear rather than with wonder? My description of a good leader is someone who is both an expert and a learner. This description captures the tension between knowing and not knowing. Expertise comes from academic education and experience. Without this you can not qualify to be a principal. However, if the learning


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stops there, then we have a stunted leader who is not growing and developing. Think about the sort of leader that you respect. If the person is too sure of themself and spends time talking only of successes, then we probably see the person as ego-centred and arrogant, and are not too impressed. If, however, we meet a leader who is open about failures and humble about successes, then we like the person and can begin an honest conversation. With such a person we can find a deeper connectedness and mutual understanding around tasks. My past experiences and reading suggested that I needed to protect myself. But now I want to assert the opposite. Vulnerability may not be the horror that I once thought. The community will see it as honesty and you can use it as an invitation to reflect, to explore and thus to grow. It is through opening yourself to the experience of vulnerability, and sharing this with others, that leadership can be developed and extended. On reflection, this awareness is well worth $50!

Followership Are you ready for some serious reading to improve your performance in your leadership roles? Sure, there are lots of books on leadership encouraging bold, new initiatives filling your book shelves, but have you thought of adding a book that deals with being a follower? For many of us it might take a little courage to walk into a bookshop and ask for a book on how to be an effective follower! We don’t think we have to learn to be a follower, or, worse, we think that it is only when leading that we make significant contributions. Do we subconsciously, or consciously, hold follower images that are negative? There is a Chinese proverb that makes this point strongly: ‘It is better to have lived one day as a tiger than one thousand years as a sheep.’ Yet the truth is that we are followers most of the time. Our society has legally mandated hierarchies and we are required to follow their instructions. Whether it is from the police, the school principal or the ticket collector, we follow their instructions mostly without demur. But even when we are in our leadership positions, we are probably a follower more often than we recognise. By this I mean that we respond to the good ideas of others, we implement the instructions of those with more authority and we let the running ball go, if we think that it has a chance of succeeding. Principals complain of the stress that they are under in trying to meet impossible expectations. And this arises because our society still believes in the mythology of the solo hero, the individual who is able to raise standards single-handedly or even to save a failing school. Surely, a


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proper recognition of the critical role of followers would not only reduce the stress on principals, but also acknowledge the team aspect of leadership where many, not one, contribute leadership and all, at some stage, play the vital role of follower. It is important that we change our negative impressions of followers. The reality is that we follow maybe as much as 90 per cent of the time and so to devalue this following is to deprive ourselves of a proper basis from which to measure our self-worth. We should not be judged only on our behaviours when we are out front. We need to be evaluated on the positive outcomes achieved, whether we are leading or following. But if we do not recognise, or indeed value, our following role, then our self-esteem could drop and high self-esteem is vital to both ourselves and the organisation that we serve. To label the principal as concurrently a leader and a follower is not as contradictory as it first appears. For example, one of the most revolutionary ideas raised by quantum theory is that light is both wave-like and particlelike at the same time, which, prior to our knowledge of quantum logic, we would have thought impossible. So it is that in our new enlightened age we can be both a leader and follower; it is no longer necessary to be only one or the other. It is important to accept that you do not need to lead all the time or even most of the time. Following is an art, like leadership. Followers need to learn how to ‘lead from behind’. They need to know how to: identify and make allies of others with similar views to their own; make constructive proposals when in problem-solving mode; and retain a positive and helpful attitude at all times even when this is difficult. Maybe the most difficult task for the follower is to learn how to tell the truth when this is not always wanted! Roland Barth (1990) seeks staff who will ask the awkward questions: The kind of school that I envision is one that offers a special place for phil osophers, for people who ask ‘why’ questions. Nothing is more important to building a culture of inquiry and a community of learners. (p. 169)

It is time that we taught the art of following, not to keep the masses in order but to increase the potential for making better decisions. It is also important to acknowledge that today we live with networked technologies that are rewriting the rulebook on how we lead and manage. These networks link together diverse individuals and groups that would otherwise be separated by reporting structures or even geography. As such, people who are not the designated leaders may have questions and answers


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vital to the wellbeing of the organisation. How the views of those not in the hierarchy are captured and implemented is the mark of effective leadership and followership by the designated leaders. The literature on communities of practice is relevant here. These communities are informal work groups of individuals who have a shared interest, where place in the hierarchy is not of significance. Learning in such communities of practice involves sharing experiences, developing trust and participating in dialogue and argument …These interactions provide the opportunity for joint enterprise – a shared outcome in the form of solving the problem. (Bowles 2004, p. 111)

A new administrative holism that includes leading and following is necessary. Perhaps Henry Ford was right those many years ago when he was reported to have said: ‘Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress and working together is success.’


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When I look back, I see a long, gradual slope, with all its features plain: the dark forests, the green pastures, the rocky outcrops, the flashing streams, the swamps, the dangerous defiles, the post-houses, the places of ambush. The landscape is silent and empty, like a relief map set for a mock battle, but once, in truth, it was a battleground, loud with the noise of combat. I offer my salute to the fallen. I wonder what happened to other survivors. I wonder too why I have been spared to stand in this high place and contemplate my yesterdays. (West 1996, pp. 1–2)

To read a book is to discover only half of the story. I am always left with questions: Who is the author, why did they write this book, what are their life experiences? Most writing is not just fuelled by objective data; the views have their origin in the author’s personal history and in their spirit and soul. Given this belief, I feel now that I should come clean on some of the formative experiences in my life. So in this part I will try to explore what is inside me, what I feel, what I think, where I have come from and where I have sought to go. It is a tangle of views and experiences, philosophy and passion, ideas and people. Giving it some coherence has not been easy! But I, too, believe that ‘any serious engagement with the world includes a questioning of one’s self’ (West 1999, p. xxi). 147


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So now I invite you to follow me through ‘the dark forests, the green pastures, the rocky outcrops, the flashing streams, the swamps, the dangerous defiles, the post-houses, the places of ambush’ of experiences that have formed my views. For Morris West, this is the ‘testimony of a pilgrim’, but for me it is the tail to the jousting, a knight’s tale of a sort.

The territory Despite the difficult terrain, I managed to climb the long, gradual slope, surviving as a principal for 31 years. This sounds like a wonderful achievement, but there were times when survival seemed unlikely. At the end of my first year, I considered resigning and may have done so, if not for an inspirational visitor—a successful principal. He told me that after only one year as principal, he had resigned, but had returned a few years later to this exacting role, this time better prepared. I took heart in his story and I hope my story may bring similar inspiration to other leaders to continue in their roles, even though the difficulties sometimes may seem overwhelming. I identify with Morris West’s poetic review of his past. Like West, I have wondered ‘why I have been spared to stand in this high place and contemplate my yesterdays’ (p. 2). I found my questing and jousting in tune with his battle metaphor. West described his view as being from the ridge. I have been there, but I have also been in the lowest valleys! But I think that we were talking about similar experiences. There were significant battles; some I won and others I lost. And when I could fight no longer, I retired! The role of principal is not to be taken lightly. In fact, I would argue the role is more suited to a young person and not someone approaching retirement; it needs unlimited energy and elastic resilience! Even when young, I found the principal’s workload overwhelming, the politics depressing, the competition fierce, the environment boggy, the horizon too far away and my personal energy occasionally depleted. But there were other times, and fortunately these were the norm, when it was exhilarating, challenging and rewarding. Then you couldn’t drag me away from the principalship. Even after a mid-career brain haemorrhage, I wanted to return to the role. As a school principal you can make a community contribution. In general, I found the students’ zest for life invigorating, the teachers’ commitment to the task and the ensuing discussions stimulating, the parents’ concern for their children inspirational; the school council’s broader perspective helpful, and the larger community always a worthy challenge. It would be easy to over-simplify the story by staying on the ridge and describing only the good times. To do so would be to fail those who are


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s etting out on a similarly demanding journey. Significant achievements often involve personal sacrifice. There are the emotional costs associated with loneliness, responsibility and conflict. There is the time commitment for community, research, development and delivery, all of this at the expense of family, friends and personal pursuits. The pros and cons need to be weighed up. However, I recommend the journey as being worthwhile. If I could live my life again, I would still be a principal, but I would try to make some significant changes as to how I lived it! Among the professional lessons learnt, one stands out: the leader needs to be flexible. The goal may seem self-evident, but achieving the goal may not deliver the outcome you are seeking. When I reflect on my history, I see no linear progression. Instead, there are deviations and a meandering progression that makes the bends and the turning back on itself of a mature riverbed look straight in comparison.

A territory map The absence of a map of the territory was evident in my first year as principal in 1971. And to be honest, at the end of my principal career in 2002, there was still no map that I could refer to. Yet, in those 31 years I did go forward, albeit with all sorts of detours and reversals. So there must have been a map and now with hindsight and time for reflection I have tried to identify its major features. I began my research by reading some of my earlier articles. I was encouraged by the philosophical statement that ‘a life not reflected upon is a life not lived’. I could feel my excitement growing. I got in touch with my feelings, unleashed the powerful intuitive self and then brought the discipline of reflection and writing to bear with the goal of identifying my territory map. This was the method I used as a principal when beginning some new venture that had fired up my imagination. First came the idea, then the reflection, followed by writing. In that way, I clarified my ideas and then could deliver what the community wanted: developed ideas; strategic plans with risk assessments; financial documentation; and all of this written in a logical manner. So how did I find my way? What sign posts did I follow? I identified some significant territory pointers. They were not as precise as latitude and longitude to a sailor, nor as definitive as the x, y and z axes to a mathematician working in three dimensions. Perhaps they will never make it into some testing process, such as the famous Myers-Briggs Type Indicator of introvert/extrovert, sensing/feeling, thinking/feeling and judging/perceiving. But they are directional and position pointers that I used to chart my progress. I have identified seven territory pointers:


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• The setting (chaos) • Environmental response (dissonance) • Motivation (dreamer with a trowel) • Response to life events (vulnerability) • Relationship with others (connection and community) • Spatial relationship (continuity) • Rational orientation (coherence). Before examining these, I need to make it clear that any achievements I have made belonged not to me alone, but to many people. I was but one member of powerful and supportive collectives, including family, friends and fellow professionals. While my contribution was unique, so was that of each member of those collectives. I can best describe the operation of these collectives using the Walt Disney Circle (Nauheimer 2005), a process that was devised for refining personal and corporate goals. In the Walt Disney Circle, there are three roles that need to be executed in order to deliver an outcome. These roles are the Dreamer of new ideas, the Planner who takes the ideas and makes them work and the Critic who assesses what is delivered and whether it could go wrong. The cycle can begin with any of the three roles and then cycles on through the other two in sequence. So the process can begin with a dream. A plan can be developed as a result of the dream. Weaknesses can be identified. These weaknesses help the Dreamer to come forward with a new dream, the Planner to redesign and finally the Critic can step forward to re-evaluate. And so the cycle is repeated through Planner, Critic, back to Dreamer. The roles I played best were Critic and Dreamer and the role I played least well was Planner. I needed others and others needed me. I am sorry that in this text I cannot individually name all of the wonderful people with whom I have worked.

Chaos My life has always been, to some degree, on the edge between chaos and order. The first territory pointer positions me according to chaos, and with such an incentive, I explored this idea of chaos and found that rather than being different, I was in tune with a society that is itself struggling on the edge of chaos. Chaos only has meaning when we have a sense of order and, fortunately we have not lost our desire to bring order into our lives or into the community. This desire to establish order has led to the development of the new science of Chaos Theory to describe the behaviour of seemingly unpredict able things such as weather, stock markets and even human behaviour. Chaos in our community comes from many sources. There is the chaos of the unmapped and not understood internal and external environment that


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we stumble about in without clear directions. There is the chaos that follows change and our era is characterised by widespread change. In psychoanalytic theory, chaos is not the initial state, but it is one that follows disintegration. And we are all too aware that there is significant disintegration occurring in our society today—the gap between the rich and the poor is widening, depression, drugs and suicide exist. These are all indicators of some deep malaise within our society. Chaos in people and in organisations, such as schools, can come from multiple agendas, ambiguity, uncertainty, conflicting responsibilities and no time to sort all this out. Given such complexity, it was rarely clear which way I should have gone at a particular time or what I should have done. I was always struggling to keep to the edge of the chaos that I found and to avoid immersion in the swirling and turbulent waters that ran close by. Yet I expect, and I hope, that people may have seen external signs of integration, strength of purpose and solidity, as after all I was trying to hold down my responsible job as a school principal! While we aspire to simplicity and order, the reality is that complexity is what we encounter in life. To deny this complexity is to deny our experiences, but, regrettably, that is what we do. This denial leads us to hope for impossible solutions that only reliably happen in fairytales. In schools the denial of complexity and the assumption of a static, predictable environment are the reasons why many reform strategies often fail. Given the complex dynamics of our rapidly changing society, we need to understand more about chaos theory and make it work for us. Michael Fullan (1999) writes that ‘living on the edge of chaos definitely does not mean accepting anarchy … the edge of chaos has both structure and openendedness’ (p. 24). To live successfully on the edge of chaos amid the turbulence of our time, we cannot predict accurately what will happen with any certainty. Consequently, I tried to be open to the unexpected. Conflicts will arise. I found that to live successfully on the edge of chaos, I needed to turn towards the conflict, rather than pretending it was not there. The good news, in such situations, is that there is the possibility of new learning arising out of this conflict.

Dissonance The second territory pointer positions me by defining my relationship with the environment. For me, this is dissonance. My student experiences of school—instead of being a humane, nurturing home—were of an impersonal factory whose reason for existence was to turn all its students into similar products. If I wanted to be accepted, I had to conform to the school’s prototypes. I could not, or more likely would not, shoehorn myself into any of the school moulds. While I did not quite see myself as a Martian, I did feel


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ifferent and difference was not acceptable to the teachers and was uncomd fortable for me. But the dissonance went beyond the personal moulding. I also could not see the relevance of most of what I studied. As a result, I was unhappy and unfulfilled at school. The curriculum, pedagogy and teacher– student relationships were neither child-centred, nor particularly relevant. Today, I see history being repeated in schools, dissonance for many students continues. The school experience of too many students is barren; opportunities have not been seized to contribute to the student’s growth as a lifelong learner, maturing adult or contributing community member. I want students to enjoy school and benefit from the learning in ways other than simply getting a piece of paper at its conclusion. I want society to get value for the significant money spent on schooling. Having felt dissonance motivated me to seek change in the way schools operated. My empathy for disenfranchised students meant I knew which way I was facing and where I had come from. I committed myself to a reform agenda and gathered like-minded people around me. I believed that schools were not focused sufficiently on students, so, together with staff, I tried to redesign the schools, curriculum and pedagogy so students would find the experience more student-centred and relevant. I attempted to change the focus from what teachers do—teaching—to what students do— active learning. One of my early decisions, unpopular with some staff, was to remove from every classroom the elevated dais that teachers stood on to teach. At the same time, teachers were encouraged to arrange the student desks in another format other than serried ranks in front of the teacher. The new arrangement was to support student collaboration and student teaching. As notebook computers became smaller and more popular in the late 1980s, and I saw that it could give more authority to students for their learning, I pushed for personal computing. I also realised that if we were to seriously address personal and inter-personal growth, we needed more time than was available in a short school day and so I worked for a residential option for students in Year 9. Some people seemed to be able to ignore the problems they found, but to me these problems were troubling and inescapable. Try as I might, I was unable to ignore them. To immerse myself in these problems, and to seek a positive resolution, often put me at odds with fellow principals. It also meant that I had to be supportive of the dissonance that others experienced and that was not always easy either. To explain this, I will describe a real incident that occurred while I was principal of Wesley College, a private school in Melbourne. Wesley College initiated and sponsored a retrospective exhibition, The Old School Tie. While I dislike too much emphasis on the old school


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tie, as it does represent privilege to many, I agreed to the exhibition as I could see that it was positively framed as a historical review of schooling. Furthermore, the exhibition was to include government schools and, thus, some of the exclusiveness of the private and wealthy was not there. So it was that 14 schools—government and non-government—combined to present an extended view of Australian educational history, portrayed through artefacts collected in all of these schools with the school tie being one artefact. I was invited to speak at the launch of the exhibition. Before doing so I invited two student representatives from each school to come and join me at the front. They were in school uniform. To my surprise, one of the 28 students who came forward was not wearing a tie, his shirt casually open at the neck. And he was from my school, Wesley College! I was horrified, despite my personal ambivalence about the exclusiveness that some make of their school tie. I was concerned that on this important public occasion for the school this student’s lack of appropriate dress would reflect badly on the school. Then the thought occurred to me: ‘This is an exhibition of The Old School Tie. Could this student be making a statement by not wearing one?’ I was caught between trying to uphold the dignity of the school, as I imagined many would think, and allowing a student to express dissent. Unable to resolve this conflict in my mind at the time, I ignored the lack of tie and proceeded with my address. My initial reaction of horror at that student’s apparent declaration is what many parents, and even educators, have when people dare to change what has been happening in schools. In the case of this story, it was about the absence of the school tie. But in schools it could be about the introduction of personal notebook computers, changes to the school day by making it longer or shorter, or a reduction in formal training classes in favour of more informal learning that could even be off campus. They cry out: ‘Stop this. We want to see schools doing what they have always done.’ Yet, the reality is there was no golden period that we should return to. When I once dared to ask some unhappy and critical parents to list the good and bad things from their school days, they replied in such a way that I filled two whiteboards with the negatives and only half a whiteboard with positives. Change is needed and we need people to speak out against what they see as wrong or unjust. Given my memories of adolescence—sitting unwillingly in boring and irrelevant classes—I should be encouraging dissent and not just ignoring it. So now let me finish the story of the school tie. With a new perception that the tie-less Wesley College student might be showing leadership in questioning accepted practice, I sought him out. I wanted to congratulate him for choosing not to wear a tie and, thus, daring to speak against a tradition that has often divided our community. Before I could do this the student apologised; it turned out that he was not making a statement.


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In his haste to change after a football match, he had simply forgotten his tie. Well perhaps this is not a story about dissonance and courage after all, but rather a story about how simply we can make powerful statements and how easily those in authority can misinterpret the action of others. I can not imagine that as a student I would have dared to make a statement by not wearing a school tie to a formal school occasion. But as an adult I could allow a student to protest in such a way. As a student I could do nothing about the irrelevance of much of what happened in schools, but as an adult I was determined to be proactive on behalf of the young. As a young person the only protest that I managed was to be apathetic. I vividly remember one end-of-year exam in Year 9, when nearly the whole class demonstrated that they had not been listening in class and that they had not even read the set novel. As well as being boring, I remember the classroom experience as impersonal. We were told to learn this, to do this, to be this. Our views were unimportant to the teachers. The course work and the teachers were all out there in a place where, try as I might, I could not reside. I felt unimportant and powerless. I now realise that I had been silenced by my education. Not only had it taken away my voice, it had taken away my selfconfidence and self-esteem. The focus of my professional contribution since then has been to give students a voice and a relevant curriculum. My perception as a young teacher was that many Australian schools of that time were for teachers and not students. It was the teachers’ interests that came to the fore. In my first year of teaching, I was taken aside by a senior teacher and told that I should not run clubs for the students, as that made the rest of the teachers—who had no intention of running clubs—look bad. The parents of students were excluded from that school as they increased the workload of teachers. Difficult students who had failed the school certificate were given a certificate, as long as they left the school. Teachers did not want to be teaching students who did not want to be at school. In my first year as a principal of a girls’ boarding school, I found that the boarders were confined to their bedrooms on Sunday afternoons to rest. Were the students tired or was it the staff members who were tired? I don’t want to minimise the heavy and demanding roles played by teachers. They don’t have an easy job. Nor do I want to assert that teachers are lazy, as the majority are extremely hard working. However, I do think that some of the discipline problems with students arose from the nature of what was then school. For many students it was neither relevant nor interesting, and so it was not surprising that these students and their parents were unhappy. Why not address the cause instead of the symptoms? When I was a principal, one of the major criticisms I made about pedagogy and curriculum was that the emphasis was on the teacher as the sage on the stage. The act of teaching was too often seen as a performance


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opportunity for teachers. It is possible to achieve a better outcome by giving more authority to students for their learning—both with content and direction (see Student-initiated learning, p. 42). So in the early 1970s I embraced the open classroom. It provided new opportunities for breaking up class groups into smaller units and for introducing multiple adults into the learning space. The goal was for a different pedagogy and curriculum that could better provide for students of different abilities, with different interests and different learning styles. With this open classroom, we had some success but we were still too tied to old thinking. With the introduction of the notebook computer into schools, personal computing for students became a real possibility; students were freed from a dependence on a teacher and a set curriculum for their learning. My memory of those early attempts at computer classrooms in 1989 is of some success. Students loved their computers, but their teachers and principal found the transition difficult. We not only had to contend with changing the pedagogy and curriculum to fit the new medium, we also found ourselves at odds with critical peers—some of whom publicly described personal computing as a stunt to market the school. The criticism and cynicism hurt, but it did not deter us—granted the positive response from students, their teachers and their parents. Courage is not something that comes easily to me, and the persistence of counterproductive practices in schools bears witness to this lack of courage by many school leaders. Life is easier for those in our community who can accept current ways of acting and thinking, even when they make no sense. One such occasion of peer pressure that I remember vividly occurred when I was asked to sign my name in ink on a linen hotel napkin that was being passed from table to table. This was during a formal dinner at an expensive hotel where I was representing my school as principal for the first time. I could not sign the napkin because it seemed like vandalism, yet all my peers at the table did sign. If the story had ended there, it would have been bad enough, but the ending was worse. The principal who had initiated this was a massive man in many ways. He was told that I had refused to sign. Can you imagine fellow principals dobbing you in like that? He crossed the room, stood over me and loudly abused me. I wanted to dive under the table, but instead sat still and tried to be brave, enduring the blast. I am sure the other principals had a better night than me on this occasion! If we accept a leadership role in society—such as teacher or principal— then we have no alternative but to accept what goes with it—pressure, complexity, ambiguity and often conflict—all of which are amplified in turbulent times. A leader has a duty to be some kind of prophet: to state things as they are and to draw the community’s attention to what needs to be changed. Unfortunately, many leaders do not see that as their calling. Most of us


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manage to rail against unsupervised teenage parties even if they have parent support, because at least we know we can take the moral high ground on this issue. But there are some issues that take a lot more courage to confront. I am reminded of the challenge that came to me when I permitted students to participate in a democratic public street protest, which I knew would not be favourably seen by many of the school’s parents and the school council. If I had delusions that it might go unnoticed, the TV crushed my dream that night. The first item on the news was an image of students from my school leading the procession through the streets in their vivid and distinguishable uniforms. If that was not enough, the TV crossed quickly to show the damage that some protestors had done and of police being taunted by some of the protestors. As it happened, my students were innocent of this damage and taunting, but you could not tell that from the way it was reported on TV. The phone calls and letters that followed showed just how difficult it is to be in a position of authority and to show leadership. Yet, it is the controversies of our time, and the dissonances we experience, that can fuel the desire for change and perhaps lead to a more socially responsible and sustainable future. It is important that we listen and respond to them.

Dreamer with a trowel My third territory pointer positions me according to motivation. I am defined by the idealism that I had as a youth and seem to have maintained into later life. Some may assert that it was not idealism, but the way of the dreamer. Dreaming suggests inactivity to some—the philosopher in the armchair, rather than the scientist in the field or the listless layabout, rather than the energetic labourer. I am happy to be an active dreamer, a dreamer with a trowel. (I spent much of my youth helping a builder who befriended me, and so I saw the power of the trowel in laying bricks and erecting buildings.) Martin Luther King Jr was a dreamer with a trowel. He told his congregation that he had seen the promised land. He lived to make that dream a reality for his people (King 1968). And there are many other dreamers who have caught our attention. Literature abounds with encouragement for people to follow their dream, such as Peekay, the young boy who worked hard and against enormous odds to achieve his dream in The power of one (Courtenay 1989). A dream comes first. But if there is no subsequent activity, it remains only a dream. For progress we not only need the dream but commitments to make that dream a reality. It is about seeing and then choosing a better future, refusing to accept what fate has dealt us. For me, leadership was a high-stakes adventure, driven by a quest for something better. I chose the adventure metaphor to acknowledge that learning is a human endeavour and this allows me to accommodate moments of


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instability, lost directions and even failure. The nature of the quest, an explicit or implicit dream, means that there are no certainties and the personal risks for the leader are great. It is a deep-seated myth that you can, by good planning and insight, avoid all the potential pitfalls in your path. Unfortunately, life is full of uncertainties and trials. Perhaps this is why we enjoy heroic tales of humble but successful leaders, such as the hobbit Bilbo Baggins. Yet, it was this same Bilbo who said that adventures can be ‘nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!’ (Tolkien 1999, p. 6). Some people only want to react to stimuli; they do not wish to be initiators. Withdraw the stimulus and those people seem to have no life. It is important that we are not annihilated simply by compliance. We need to have a predominant self-impulse. In my first principalship, I guided that school (along with others) through perilous waters from a small girls’ school of 103 students to coeducation and then to the takeover of a neighbouring boys’ school that had gone coeducational too. There was opposition, conflict and, in the midst of this, I had a brain haemorrhage and was hospitalised for about three months. When I did return to work, given the stressful situation, I reluctantly started to look for another school—a place to begin again, now with the knowledge of previous mistakes. The new school and I got on well, and I stayed 18 years. They were productive and exciting years. All of this was an adventure that has something in common with riding a wet slippery log down a fast flowing stream. Leadership, as well as being creative, is an assertive act. Leaders are not Cinder-ellas waiting to be delivered, but Fire-ellas taking the initiative (Loader 1997, p. 46). New ideas and patterns not only have to be dreamed but they need to be forged. We need the metaphorical trowel to help shape the future. Not only does a leader need a trowel, sometimes they are that trowel for others. Leaders need to be there to support those who follow. Leadership is about taking people out of their comfort zone and into a new place that makes them anxious. But you cannot leave people there. You need to give them practical support and encouragement. Change requires courage from both the leader and those being led. Such courage does not come without cost! Sometimes we want to hide behind others, trying to avoid personal responsibility. We deny the power of one, and that heroic and charismatic leadership is possible. Instead, we assert that, in general, leaders are limited in their powers. Excuses are made, such as the system is against us, the staff union will not buy that, parents will not send their children to our school if we do that. Yet there can be no excuse for a lack of imaginative and assertive leadership. Nor should so called facts, for example financial balance sheets, be allowed to imprison the imagination.


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Schools are looking for leadership and direction. The educational past is not where we can obtain this. And it is not necessarily to be found in books. It has to come from inside the leader. Recently, I had reason to reflect on this as I travelled on a Melbourne tram. I was recovering from a knee operation and was trying to cope with crutches while travelling on these trams. I found myself lurching forward, falling back and generally being very unstable. Melbourne trams have a fast acceleration and deceleration, but they have few seats from which to enjoy this exhilarating sensation. As I thought about this unpleasant experience, I thought of those designated school leaders who let other people do the driving, while they continue as unstable passengers in a rapidly moving twenty-first century vehicle called a school. To carry this analogy a little further, it could be noted that many of the tram passengers are looking backwards! Creativity does not have to be the product of dreams. It can be as a result of stumbling over something or the introduction of an idea or practice from another context. Neither of these comes from some inner magic, but the creativity lies in seeing the idea’s value and introducing it into a new setting. This was how Methodist Ladies’ College, Melbourne, came to have a school evaluation. It did not come about because the council, the staff or the parents requested it; it happened because I was in America and stumbled on a school in the midst of an evaluation. I thought it was good and so brought the idea back to Australia. We need to be open to new experiences, to reflect on our stumbles and to think laterally. I can’t vouch for this story, but I am told that a slow lift in an American hotel was the source of much complaint. Since the management could not afford to replace the lift, they hit upon the idea of panelling the inside of the lift with full-length mirrors. Apparently the complaints about how slow the lift travelled stopped as people enjoyed looking at themselves in the mirrors! Successful leadership involves about 10 per cent vision (dreaming) and 90 per cent execution (the trowel). Leadership needs to be able to live with contradictions and not expect congruencies, accept the unresolved and delight in the resolved, and see opportunity for learning in the disagreements.

Vulnerability This is the fourth territory pointer, describing my emotional response to life events. It is important to remember that the territory we traverse is one of human identity and enterprise, and not some inhuman terrain. Do we acknowledge personal vulnerability or ignore it and pretend it does not exist? Our answer positions us and defines not only our leadership style but also our humanity. Vulnerability is something we all feel at some stage and if we do not, then that is an even bigger worry! But we are not all comfort able about acknowledging this vulnerability. Initially, I tried to hide it, but


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as my courage and my confidence increased, I acknowledged my vulnerability and found that it made possible some exciting new learning. By not being too sure of myself and by opening myself to criticism, I was a more attentive listener. When feeling vulnerable, I took less for granted and worked harder to deliver the goal. So, vulnerability made for better outcomes for the school and more growth for me, but it meant I needed to call on personal reserves so I could find the necessary energy and courage to cope. Letting go has not been easy. Even today, in my mid 60s, I have a tendency towards self-protection and carefulness about personal revelation. My early school days taught me to ignore personal feelings, and to wear a mask and a hair shirt. Regrettably, I still feel the negative power of those early school days on me. I began my teaching career trying to hide the fact that I was a firstyear-out teacher from my students. I wanted my fellow teachers to think that I was coping and so I did not readily share my problems in the classroom. I moved from teaching science to maths, as the latter had answers to questions, whereas the former involved me confessing to students that I did not always know the answer to their questions. I felt more confident with a neat public persona and tried to hide the chaotic personal feelings underneath. By far, my most confronting and powerful experience was as a young teacher in Canada where I learned that both students and teachers were allowed feelings, and that they could be expressed for positive benefit for all in a classroom setting. I had taught (maybe this is not the correct word, given that they had not learned) a difficult Year 11 class and the class had left the room at the end of the lesson. My next lesson was in the same classroom with another Year 11 class. I began the lesson with the new class as I had ended the one with the class before—in a grumpy mood. Very early in the lesson one of the students quietly, but strongly, spoke to me in front of the class: ‘Mr Loader, we are a different class.’ I was taken back by the directness and appropriateness of the remark. My memory is that I stopped, reflected and then apologised to the students. These new students had done nothing wrong. It was me who was at fault. I should have been dealing with my feelings and not projecting them onto the class. So I asked the students, ‘What do we do now?’ They suggested that I would benefit from a cup of coffee, and so we all took a coffee break and then began again. My relationship with those students changed for the better and the experience transformed how I related to other classes subsequently. It became less of a battle between them and me, and more of a joint exploration and consultation. I did not bring perfection and they were not to be dominated: somehow we became a team and worked together. For me, the interesting consequence was that instead of this making me vulnerable, I felt stronger and no longer so alone.


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I sought openness, too, as a principal and I had varying degrees of success. It is hard to maintain this when confronted by some powerful critics. In the early years, I took disapproval of the school personally, which eventually took its toll and I had a stroke. In later years, I managed to distinguish better between criticisms of the school and me as a person, and so managed to survive and achieve as a school principal for 31 years. Furthermore, I managed to find space for me and to find expression for the passion within me. The unpredictable endemic change of our era makes us all vulnerable. Instead of following well-defined roads with clear sign posts, we are explorers in an unknown land, dreamers daring to follow our intuition, leaders stumbling forward, a community in transition. The uncertainty of the enterprise makes us vulnerable and doubly vulnerable if we dare to lead. As leaders, we are trying to bring others with us and this means we need to be involved in their transitions. When we trip and fall, we rise with some trepidation to face the community, because we don’t like looking silly and because our culture, in general, rejects the messy, ambiguous and sometimes non-rational activities that are integral to learning from experience. The reality is that stumbling leadership has led to some remarkable strategic breakthroughs in schools, such as notebook computers. To follow your intuition, to dare to dream and to take the unknown road makes you vulnerable, but it also opens you to new possibilities. There was a time when mental health was seen as the absence of psycho-neurotic behaviour. But today I am assured that the life of a healthy person is still characterised by fears, conflicting feelings, doubts and frustrations, as much as by positive feelings. Anxiety is not a sickness to be taken away by tablets, but through unfreezing ideas and practices of being, with a view to setting down new practices and establishing a new being. And this takes me to the next pointer, Connection and community.

Connection and community The fifth territory pointer defines how we relate to others. For me this is first connection and then community; building it and participating in it. To survive on the edge of chaos, you need to be well anchored in a family or community. So it was that from my more chaotic centre I reached out to people—my wife, friends, professionals and fellow travellers. With them I sought connection and community. These connections with people, and the subsequent communities that I lived in, kept me sane, and gave meaning and verve to the everyday events of my life and the schools I worked for. You are defined by the type of connections that you make. Some of my peers found their connections through regimented marching under a governmental sergeant major, to a set tune that had been written in the


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so-called golden age of schooling. This was a connection that I couldn’t make. I wanted to hear many different tunes, each describing possible future scenarios. I recognised many authoritative sergeant majors from my past: from academia, from the community and from a disquieting inner voice. As a consequence, I was pulled in different directions, often at the same time. As for a structure, there were no disciplined ranks and no fixed march for me. But it wasn’t an anonymous milling crowd either. While crowds offered the freedom to be an individual, they were too impersonal. I needed likeminded partners who could also hear different music, recognise different authorities and were willing to experiment with different structures. The connections I preferred were those suggested by the metaphor of a creative dance group. The lack of imposed choreography allows for freedom of expression, uninhibited by forces of conformity. The dance inspires the search for innovative solutions to new and old problems. My hope was that from the outside the dance had some acceptable form and discernible purpose, so that parents would believe in the people and the institution enough to enrol their children! I also wanted my staff to have this freedom. But how was this to be done given that the school was centrally administered, with a hierarchy, a strategic plan and accountability structures that meant that we all felt under pressure to perform? To help find a way forward, I employed a consultant to work with a small articulate group of staff and myself over about ten weeks. The conversations we enjoyed were honest, personally revealing and led to significant changes to the school. We talked about pressure, expectations and the image we held of our institution in our minds. As a group exercise, we wrote an allegory that expressed both our experiences and our hopes for the future. I still find this inspiring, over 15 years later. A group of teachers and administrators have gathered to talk and plan. They are all dressed in jeans and flannel shirts. They are in a constantly breaking and reforming circle with no apparent leader. No extraneous light is necessary as there is a fire in their centre emanating from books that are burning but are not consumed by the fire, from the sparks that are flying from interchanges between people and the luminescent screens connected to the Internet. The group is not seated for their conversations but animatedly engaged in dance which includes pronounced leaps, sometimes falls and repetitive movements. The dialogue, when there is one, is honest, open, often animated, moving between school and personal matters. Each person is holding a torch. The fire from within one person is transmitted to that person’s torch and it ignites. Other members blow on their torches and their torches flare. When the torches of most members are


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alight, the group disperses into the school and other members of staff are encouraged to gather around fires, dance and light their torches, some even use the lit torches of the original group members to light their torches. Suddenly the school is lighter, brighter and warmer and is regarded as a beacon school. (Loader 1995, p. 11)

Without my connection to people, I would not have survived the difficulties encountered in my first years of retirement from the principalship. Schools may be lifeless institutions, but the networks within them are alive, and can be supportive and life-enhancing, not only to the institution but also to the individual. Creating a community does not mean stifling debate. Indeed, the task of institutional members is to ask searching questions about relevance, purposes and achievements of the institution and to assist with the reinterpret ation of these institutions in the light of the members’ personal experiences. The members’ task is to find their voice, to not be imprisoned in these institutions—servants to their myths and mysteries. And when they have given voice to their views, and there is an ensuing dialogue, then a healthy and vibrant community can be established. However, the searching question, the irate objection and the minority (or majority) dissent in public forums is not easy for the leader to deal with. They may be the life blood of the community, but they also represent obstacles and potential failure to the mission being espoused. I can honestly say that I valued the critic’s input as they surfaced their objections and gave encouragement to others to find voice. But I also confess that I was frustrated by the critics, as I wanted to get on with trowelling in my dream. But what frustrated me more was those who did not speak openly! I remember with some clarity my first staff meeting at a new school. At the end of my address, one staff member rose to his feet to refute all that I had said. At the end of each statement there was applause from the staff. This continued for about ten minutes and finally he finished. I did not try and refute his statement; the staff knew what I thought. I asked if anyone else wanted to speak. No one did then and not much was said later in staff meetings, but there was a lot said behind closed doors. Such a situation is not good for the staff, principal or school. But to get beyond this to an open trusting dialogue is the goal. Few of us are good at dealing with individuals and minority groups. Politicians have a way of avoiding the incoherence and consequent conflicts between competing individuals and groups. Politicians gather individuals together and collectively refer to them as the electorate, the masses or the people. Such labelling is one way of turning individuals with conflicting


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interests into some impersonal conglomerate. It is easier to deal with generalist policies for the ‘greater good’ of the conglomerates than with the trouble some individual stories, minority interests and restrictive practices, which, if confronted, might lead to a fairer and more just society. Ignoring the needs of individuals and minority groups is not an appropriate policy for schools. It may suit many that schools start at 8.45 am and finish at 3.15 pm, that the school terms and holidays are fixed, that the curriculum is limited, that outcomes are prescribed and that you are placed in class groups according to your age. But it is not good for all and alternatives ought to be available. Furthermore, present institutions have a monopoly-like hold. It is difficult to participate in government-funded learning outside of schools, despite the fact that some students find school a place where they fail. This is why I explored alternative delivery models, including the networked school—real and virtual in nature—and horizontally integrated into the community, unlike our current silo schools. The students’ community is critical too. It needs assistance to develop. One deeply held school myth that needs to be confronted is that schooling only occurs in a classroom and that learning only occurs with a teacher. Students need real communities in which to live and grow, communities in which they must share responsibility for outcomes, communities in which they cannot hide, communities in which they need to be an adult as well as a child. These assumptions were tested at Marshmead and Clunes. And the research evidence is that these residential programs have been a success in giving students the opportunity to build community, to grow personally and to take responsibility for their learning (Mason 2002). All students need and deserve a community living experience. Community has been a feature of my enjoyment and satisfaction in schools. But a word of warning; to work in concert with like-minded people in the pursuit of a worthy goal is so satisfying that it may sideline other interests that are important, if we are to lead a balanced life and to be a well-rounded person! This was my experience.

Continuity As well as the connection to others, critical to success and meaning is the connection to the past and the future—some form of continuity. This continuity is not just the link from our present to our past history; it is the solid base from which we can step out confidently into the future. I had the wonderful experience of visiting my 92-year-old uncle and his 91-year-old wife. They were living in their unit, managing for themselves. Since both my parents had been dead for more than 20 years, this visit with my uncle linked me to my past. It gave me an important sense of who I was and the motivation to struggle onward.


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As well as family continuity, there is a continuity of experience. My past not only gives me clues to my present motivation and goals, it also drives me forward. ‘The past beats inside me like a second heart’ (Banville 2005, p. 13). My past included my constrained and empty school days, and I wanted to move on from there and build better experiences for today’s students. So, as a teacher and principal I was at odds with those parents who seemed intent on replicating their pasts. My goal was to provide for the students’ future, as indefinable as that was. So I tried to construct a school that was recognisable enough for parents to enrol their students and sufficiently different for students to want to stay at the school. I found that the future seemed clearer when I understood more of the past. Working from the past, through the present, to the future delivered one of the decisive elements in the transformation at Methodist Ladies’ College, Melbourne; this was the school evaluation undertaken in the 1980s. The school was not required to undertake this evaluation for accreditation, nor was it accountability orientated. Rather, this was a proactive review. The goal was to review old and new programs and practices, to assess the current environment external to the school—socially and academically—and to use the knowledge gained as a basis for planning for the school’s future. It was to be ‘the yeast that will keep a good school rising’ (Loader 1984). To provide structure and methodology for the review, I adapted an American model that provided an in-depth view of what was happening in a school and involved the whole-school community. The ‘great strength of this evaluation was the feeling that it was owned by the school’ (Wootton 1985, p. 6). The first of four steps was to clarify purposes, identify and state the school mission, and to scope out the areas for review. This was done by a steering committee that identified 61 areas for review, which included the principal’s leadership and the council’s governance. The second step was the self-study part of the review. All staff members were assigned to one of 61 writing groups, asked to research what was happening, and propose recommendations and commendations. In step three, two outside experts for each area were invited into the school for two days to appraise the self-study, and then to write their recommendations and commendations. The 120 experts came from universities, other schools and the community. The final step was the implementation. A new specialist committee was set up to review the recommendations, assign priority to these and suggest a timeline. In general, staff were pleased to participate and considered the outcome worthwhile. We did have a threatened staff strike, but it was not about the methods or purpose of the evaluation, but about the extra workload


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that it generated. Compromises were reached, with time allocated from the teaching days and some student-free days were introduced. The result was extraordinary for the school, including immense staff pride in their achievements and optimism about the future for the school. The staff appreciated the continuity of the experience that this provided—from the past, through the present, to the future. However, this was not true for the governing school council. When I took the commendations and recommendations of the school review to the school council, mistakenly expecting praise, I found myself censured. I had failed to take the council with me on this journey from the past, through the present, to the future. While they appreciated the large list of school commendations, they feared the recommendations for improvements that they felt could not be financially afforded. Their expression was: ‘The rabbits have been let free to run!’ They had not understood the need to work with the staff from the past, through the present, to the future. While council members were aware of the school evaluation, and were themselves evaluated, they were apprehensive that giving staff such freedom to make recommendations would get out of hand. The council felt that they might lose control. In particular, they were fearful that staff members were expecting all of the recommendations—and there were about 1000 of these—to be funded immediately. Once the council understood the last stage of sifting through the recommendations and assigning priority, they relaxed. The council, and staff before them, needed to know that we were not throwing out the past, but building on it progressively, incrementally and in an integrative way that was sustainable. My attempts at change management in the 1980s were intuitive. Today, we have models to help avoid the mistakes that I made. One such model is David Kotter’s Eight Steps in Change Management (1996). Kotter’s model requires that you first establish a sense of urgency and form a powerful guiding coalition. I had done this with the staff but failed with the council. Once these are in place, then you create a vision, communicate it, empower others, plan and create short-term wins, consolidate improvements and institutionalise new approaches. Passion and intuition are wonderful, but they need structure and experience! As I reflect on that school evaluation and the subsequent school changes, I am encouraged by the observation of David Malouf (1998, p. 101). In describing Australia’s history, he could be writing about us individually: The truth is that our history has not been one of unbroken progress, either materially or socially. It has been a continuous shifting back and forth between periods of economic boom and long periods of depression: between a confident openness to the world and to our capacity


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for experimentation and a cautious drawing in behind defensive walls; between a brave inclusiveness and a panicky need to make distinctions and exclude. But it is a continuity, and we need to take it whole.

Coherence Each of us will find meaning and purpose in our lives in different ways. For me I needed something bigger than myself, something more worthy. I nitially, it was in religion and then later I found it in relationships and in a career. This has been the experience of others too. For Morrie in Tuesdays with Morrie (Albom 1998, p. 43): The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.

I threw myself into my career and from this involvement I found satisfaction and purpose. As well, it gave me some integration with my past and a future that needed to be achieved. Every day brought new challenges and I would jump out of bed to attend to these. But I did become too identified with the school, ‘my school’, and took criticisms too much to heart. I would have valued the wise counsel of Morrie at that time. He tells the story (Albom 1998, pp. 180–1) of an ocean wave who, approaching the shore, sees other waves crashing into the cliffs and is frightened. He fears that he will be destroyed on the rocks. A second wave offers counsel: ‘No, you don’t understand. You’re not a wave, you’re part of the ocean.’ I needed to remember that I was part of the greater whole when criticism came my way. Coherence is about finding your place in the universe. It is about balance, in our lives and in that of the community for whom we work. It is about perspective; making sense of what is happening and showing hope, and believing in the possibility of delivering a better future. It is about values—fighting not for trivial outcomes, but ones that show respect for eternal values. It is about coping with the unknown and the known, and living as comfortably as possible on the edge of chaos. It is about having visions, being able to articulate these and negotiating with others to form a better vision. It is about making connections from today’s successes and problems to tomorrow’s possibilities. Coherence is initially a personal thing but it does not stop there if you are part of a community. At three consecutive Council meetings, as principal I presented different options for consideration. I was surprised when one of the Council members said with feeling: ‘I give up. He keeps changing his mind.’ I now acknowledge that while what I presented was coherent to me,


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it was not to this council member (and probably others). I was thinking out loud and inviting their participation in this thinking. I knew where I wanted to go, but could not find the vehicle. I wanted their assistance. If we wish others to join us on such a journey, it must be clear to all what is happening and what is requested. That sounds simple, but I found it challenging.

And you? I see myself defined as being at odds with what is happening in many schools (dissonance), an idealist in believing in and working for a better future (dreamer with a trowel), feeling exposed as a person and leader (vulnerability), looking for and building affiliation (connection, continuity and community) and needing to make sense of what is happening to me and in the world (coherence). I know other successful principals who could be described as comfortable with the status quo, relaxed (believing that if it’s not broken, don’t try to fix it), confident in themselves, self-sufficient and happy to take the world as it comes. Or is that just the face they are presenting to the world? Using these position pointers, or ones you devise, how would you describe yourself? I conclude this book by encouraging you to joust your way forward following your inner compass. I hope that you will take up the cause of the new generation of students by throwing down the gauntlet, entering the lists and coming to close quarters with those who would defend the less than satisfactory present situation in our schools. I hope you will refuse to allow cultural assumptions to remain untested and that you will work to disentangle the good from the bad, the past from the future and myth from truth. The fact is that we can survive only in communion, with our present, our past and with dusty footsore fellows on the road. We are all haunted by a poetry of living: by lullabies half-remembered, the sound of train whistles in the night, the scent of lavender in a summer garden. We are haunted too by grief and terror, and memories of random cruelty and the macabre dissolutions of age. (West 1996, p. 3)


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