A Toolkit for Engagement: An Authentic Strategy and Solutions Architecture

for Community Engagement within your school

September 2012

Context: About Dr Phil Dr Philip SA Cummins

Teaching and working in and with schools since 1988

Educator, Presenter, Thought Leader, Consultant, Author, Textbook Writer, Syllabus Writer, PhD in Australian History

Managing Director: CIRCLE – The Centre for Innovation, Research, Creativity and Leadership in Education – supporting over 500 schools and other organisations nationally and internationally to achieve better outcomes for more learners by building cultures of excellence in leadership and learning.

phil@circle.org.au www.circle.org.au +61 410 439 130

Today’s Content 1.  THE FOUR Ps OF

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

2.  THREE APPROACHES TO KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

3.  PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF EVIDENCE-BASED LEADERSHIP IN SCHOOLS

Your take-aways Three things: •  You know more about •  You feel more confident about •  You might use at your school tomorrow •  You might think about carefully for a long time before

using at your school

1. THE FOUR Ps OF COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

Partnerships, Planning, Politics, Preparation

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Albert Einstein

Recognise this? We’ve always done

it this way here

Community Engagement: Planning

Family and community involvement must be planned as a component of … leadership and of school and classroom organisation, not an after thought.

JL Epstein (2005)

Discussion: How does your school plan its community engagement?

Community Engagement: Partnerships

School-family-community partnerships have been shown to meet the diverse needs of students, enhancing student success by fostering connections among the people who play central roles in children’s lives.

KP Dotson-Blake, VA Foster & CF Gressard (2009)

Discussion: How does your school build strategic partnerships?

Community engagement is like politics done right. It's planned, it's flexible, carries all the opinions and weight of the people's voices into consideration to create a plan of attack that meets the needs of the people.

Bach Pham (2010)

Discussion: How do you coordinate the political dimension of community engagement in your school?

Community Engagement: Politics

Leaders must be experts in the evaluation of data, and the data that has been assembled across research worldwide indicates that activators are more successful than facilitators.

John Hattie, Visible Learning, 2009

Discussion: How do you use data to prepare for community engagement in your school?

Community Engagement: Preparation

Your questions

Your take-aways One thing: •  You know more about •  You feel more confident about •  You might use at your school tomorrow •  You might think about carefully for a long time before

using at your school

2. THREE APPROACHES TO KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

Knowing, thinking, diagnosing, strategising

The majority of marketers fail to filter out noise and put data front and center in decision making. Only 11% of marketers use data to inform their decision-making on a regular basis.

Patrick Spenner & Anna Bird, HBR, 2012

Recognise this? They do it this way at

another school

Know your community to engage your community

•  Who is your community? Who are the key stakeholders you are trying to engage? -  Students? -  Parents? -  Faculty? -  Board? -  The broader community (including Alumni)? -  Prospective parents?

•  Can you segment these stakeholder categories further?

Think like your community to engage your community

•  How do you know what your community thinks? •  How do you know what your community wants from

your school? •  What systems do you have in place to collect, identify,

sort, analyse and evaluate this type of data? •  Who can help you with this in your school?

Diagnose before you prescribe

A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be. 

Wayne Gretzky, Canadian ice hockey player 

In your school …

Who is the leader? Who is the strategic thinker?

The Principal and executive teachers?

The Board?

You?

If not you, then who else?

Strategic thinking Seeing ahead Seeing behind Seeing above Seeing below Seeing beside Seeing beyond Seeing it through

H Mintzberg H (1995) ‘Strategic Thinking as Seeing’, in B Garratt (ed) Developing Strategic Thought

Your role? Seeing where others do not

Strategic competency

The ability to articulate guiding values, develop and communicate a shared vision, develop a strategy, and motivate others to move forward in a common direction.

P Hallinger P and K Snidvongs (2008) ‘Educating Leaders: Is There Anything to Learn from Business Management?’

Your role? Strategic agency

Strategic architecture Strategic architecture is not a detailed plan. It identifies the major capabilities to be built, but doesn’t specify exactly how they are to be built. It shows the relative position of the major load-bearing structures, but not the placement of every electrical outlet and doorknob.

G Hamel and CK Prahalad (1994) Competing for the Future

Your role? Doing the right planning

Strategic foundation

How groups and organizations engage in strategic conversations and the quality of those conversations is the foundation of strategic thinking

B Davies (2003) `Rethinking Strategy and Strategic Leadership in Schools', Educational Management

Administration & Leadership 31 (3)

Your role? Promoting conversations

Strategic focus

Why? 90%

How? 10%

Your role? Getting the right balance

Your questions

Your take-aways One thing: •  You know more about •  You feel more confident about •  You might use at your school tomorrow •  You might think about carefully for a long time before

using at your school

3. PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF EVIDENCE-BASED LEADERSHIP IN

SCHOOLS

Recognise this?

The ability of school leaders and administrators to use data to inform practice has become a requirement of such positions. Several studies suggest that leaders and administrators often do not feel confident in using data, or often use it inefficiently or incorrectly.

Marsh et al, ‘Making Sense of Data Based Decision Making in Education’ 2006 Wolstetter et al ‘Creating a System for Data-Driven Decision-Making: Applying the Principal-

Agent Framework’ 2008; Spillain ‘Conceptualising the Data-Based Decision-Making Phenomena’ 2012

I rely on a good “gut

feel” to make my decisions

A Rationale for Evidence-Based Practice

The effective collection, analysis and use of data is a powerful way of engaging the community – an evidence-based approach enables schools to: •  Build their reputation •  Gauge what the community think and feel •  Diagnose and respond to problems •  Develop and share vision, goals and achievements •  Build relationships

Seven Principles of Evidence-Based Practice in Schools

1.  Mission alignment: Understand your purpose and concentrate your activity on this goal; don’t spread your resources too widely.

2.  Open inquiry: Ask good questions; don’t expect a particular outcome. 3.  Dynamic explication and experimentation: Define your processes, test and

iterate; don’t lock things down too soon. 4.  Wise measurement: Use whole-school frameworks, grand school averages

and value-added models; avoid benchmarks where possible. 5.  Contextualised interpretation: Analyse data by finding patterns that tell the

real story; don’t let data speak for itself. 6.  Balanced judgment: Temper data with intuition. 7.  Collaborative improvement: Use the findings to help engage all members of

the community to construct better outcomes for more learners.

Systems for Gathering Data

•  Assessment and Reporting (Internal and External) •  Timetable •  Enrolments •  Financial •  ICT •  Marketing •  HR •  Others?

Asking Questions About Data: The Inquiry Process

Do we understand the importance of frameworks in analysing how schools

work? Theoretical, conceptual and practical frameworks are like the scaffolding builders use to repair buildings which allow the builder to focus on those aspects of the building most in need of work.

Lester, ‘On the Theoretical, Conceptual and Philosophical Foundations for Research in Mathematics Education’ 1995

Having a framework helps to build a structure of ‘justification’ rather than a structure of ‘explanation’.

Eisenhart, ‘Conceptual Frameworks for Research’ 1991

The CIRCLE School

Framework Toolkit:

Language, Stakeholder

Inquiry, Dashboard, Analysis, Strategy, Planning,

Communications, Evaluation

School leadership: For others, for change, for life, for

real

Achievement: Leadership in

action, leadership style

Relationships: Team culture,

Conflict resolution

Communications Communication,

Vision

Initiatives: Understanding

& managing change,

Problem-solving & decision-

making

Reputation: Team culture,

Discipline

School Improvement Domains Improved culture and practice should be reflected in tangible evidence of change in: •  Achievement: How we will improve achievement across all areas of the

school community, especially for our students – learning, leadership, service, sport and co-curricular.

•  Relationships in our community: How we will build and nurture our important relationships – students, staff, parents, Board, alumni, broader community members.

•  Communication: How we will communicate among our community members and to others about what we are doing and how we are going.

•  School initiatives: How we will implement what we see as the most important programs that will benefit our community.

•  The school’s reputation: How we will care for and promote the school’s identity within and external to our community.

Evaluation Criteria

•  Outcomes: Did we achieve what we set out to achieve with our performance?

•  Processes: Have we used the best teaching and learning, research and development, information recording and tracking, evaluation and decision-making, and resourcing and other business processes in our operations?

•  Community Engagement: Have we engaged with and satisfied our community’s expectations?

•  Ethos: Have we enhanced our school’s ethos and values? •  Strategic Intent: Are we aligned with and contributing to

our strategic intent?

School Improvement Domain: Communication

•  Values: We believe that the primary purpose of a leader is to help a team to define and implement its shared vision. We should, therefore, aim to be accurate, supportive and appropriate in the way we communicate with each other. In leading communication, we draw on content that is related to personal qualities – social and interpersonal skills, engaging and working with the community, communication and vision.

•  Aim: Our focus should be on how we will communicate among our community members and to others about what we are doing and how we are going.

•  Leadership Knowledge and Understanding: –  Do I know how to construct and communicate vision? –  Do I understand the principles of strategic thinking and school planning? –  Do I know how to use effective planning processes? –  Do I understand how to communicate effectively?

•  Leadership in Action: –  Do I communicate well? –  Is my team built on principles and practice of good communication?

Communications and Data Key Question: How can we use data to improve the way we personalise communications for and promote the engagement of our stakeholders? •  Newsletters and other news channels? •  Forums for parents, friends and the broader community? •  Community events?

For discussion: •  What systems for data-gathering do you have in place in your school?

Are there other ways of gaining the data? •  What is the problem that you are trying to overcome? •  What questions might you ask of this data to solve this problem? •  How will you collate and process the data? •  How can you use this data to improve practice?

School Improvement Domain: Reputation

•  Values: We believe that we should recognise the importance of a school’s reputation and act in ways that enhance it. In leading for reputation, we draw on content that is related to personal qualities - social and interpersonal skills, developing self and others, team culture, and discipline.

•  Aim: Our focus should be on how we will care for and promote the school’s identity within and external to our community.

•  Leadership Knowledge and Understanding: –  Do I know how to manage my team’s identity? –  Do I understand the principles of teams and team relationships? –  Do I understand how to manage team culture, environment and ethos? –  Do I know how to build a culture of discipline within my team?

•  Leadership in Action: –  Do I have a good reputation and enhance our good reputation? –  Does my team have a good reputation and enhance our good reputation?

Reputation and Data Key Question: How can we use a school framework to improve the collection and analysis of data about our school community?

For discussion: •  What systems for data-gathering do you have in place in

your school? Are there other ways of gaining the data? •  What is the problem that you are trying to overcome? •  What questions might you ask of this data to solve this

problem? •  How will you collate and process the data? •  How can you use this data to improve practice?

Your questions

Your take-aways One thing: •  You know more about •  You feel more confident about •  You might use at your school tomorrow •  You might think about carefully for a long time before

using at your school

Today’s Content 1.  THE FOUR Ps OF

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT 2.  THREE APPROACHES TO KNOWLEDGE

MANAGEMENT IN COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

3.  PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF EVIDENCE-BASED LEADERSHIP IN SCHOOLS

Your take-aways Three things: •  You know more about •  You feel more confident about •  You might use at your school tomorrow •  You might think about carefully for a long time before

using at your school

Your questions

Remember that when you leave this earth, you can take with you nothing that you have received…only what you have given: a full heart enriched by honest service, love, sacrifice, and courage.

Francis of Assisi

Dr Phil Cummins phil@circle.org.au www.circle.org.au +61 410 439 130