making self-evaluation work for you? one way or another!!!!
TRANSCRIPT
Making self-evaluation work for
you?One way or another!!!!
What makes learning successful?
''My father would cry reading Dickens to us as kids. These are the passages I remember.'’ Malcolm Gladwell
''One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers - but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material - but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.'’ Carl Jung
"People learn what they need to learn, not what someone else thinks they need to learn.” Fullan (1994)
"In the end, it is the teacher in his or her classroom who has to interpret and bring about improvement.” Fullan and Hargreaves
"You cannot have students as continuous learners and effective collaborators, without teachers having these same characteristics.” Sarason (1990)
What makes a difference
There are at least four important ingredients for improving education. The first are the professional skills of those who work with children.
Research has shown that factors like national or regional policies are less influential on pupils’ achievements than factors within each school
Of the school factors, the skills of staff came top.
The most important of these was effective classroom management
The other factors
The second vital ingredient is the raising of aspirations and expectations.
Third, staff morale and attitude to their craft. It is hard to improve what you do through clenched teeth.
Fourth is the climate within the school..a positive attitude to improvement in which people look at what is happening in classrooms, reflect on it and implement judicious change
The “Mortimore” factors
Purposeful leadership of the staff by the head-teacher
The involvement of the whole leadership team
The involvement of teachers
Consistency among teachers
Structured lessons
Intellectually challenging teaching
Work-centered environment
Limited focus within sessions
Maximum communication between teachers and students
Record keeping
Parental involvement
Positive climate
The big ten classroom factors?• having a positive attitude • the development of a pleasant social /
psychological climate in the classroom • having high expectations of what pupils
can achieve • lesson clarity • effective time management • strong lesson structuring • the use of a variety of teaching methods • using and incorporating pupils’ ideas • using appropriate and varied questioning
[Reynolds]
Effective Qualities
Sharing the management of learning with pupils
Promoting the belief that attainment can improve
Using a wide range of sources of information
Identifying a range of needs
Responding to needs
Giving and receiving feedback
Using a range of sources of support
The 4 big questions
What are you going to do to improve your practice?
What help or support will you need to ake that improvement?
What outcomes will you expect your young people to achive as a result of the improvement?
What evidence will you look at to determine if the improvement has been made?
What are the models for educational change?
Data led
Driven
Collegiate
Autocratic
Structural
Top down
Bottom up…………………..
Time to talk
Agree or disagree?
Which model of educational change do you think works best?
The Leadership Hierarchy
Obstruction
Abdication
Instruction
Direction
Enablement
Empowerment
Key Principles
Change should only be driven by self-evaluation, provided that self-evaluation is realistic and takes account of economic and social changes
If all learners were experiencing the best practice in our schools, we would not be talking about system change
We need to build on your care, commitment and practice
Key principles
Staff work best when they are enthusiastic about what they are teaching
….. and who they are teaching
Otherwise it makes no difference to pupil achievement
Professionalism
Reflection
Ambition
Courage
Tenacity
Idealism
Care
Energy
Consonance
Schools which recognise consonance are more able to see opportunities for focusing their development work on the achievement of students and the teaching and learning process through externally generated change
Some thoughts
“Smart kids pass tests”
It’s the last question that holds the key to high achievement
Attainments are only for entrance, they don’t guarantee success in the world you enter
It is not our job to enable young people to fail, it is our task to give them the tools to succeed
The Lacuna
Their white dresses swirled like froth, with skirts so wide they could take the hems in their fingertips and raise them up to make sudden wings, like butterflies, fluttering as they turned…..
“Indian girls,” she spat……”A corn eater will never be more than she is”
The dancers were butterflies. From a hundred paces Salome could see the dirt under their fingernails, but not their wings
Adding value is not enough for some of our young people, we need to challenge their destinies. We are not editing life stories, we are creating new narratives
How do you want to be remembered?
She had a great inspection report
She gave something back
She was a brilliant teacher
She changed children’s lives
She was a key part of all that we achieved
This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no "brief candle" for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
