A School Leader Development Program: Using How People ...



A School Leader Development Program: Teaching About Learning & Leading Using Principles of How People Learn[1]

Nancy Vye, John Bransford, & Hank Clark

University of Washington, COE

Kristen Weatherby

Microsoft, Partners in Learning

An important challenge facing schools in the US and elsewhere around the world is the improvement of student learning. In this country, students perform more poorly on international assessments than many of their counterparts in other countries (National Center for Education Statistics, 2000). And even in countries where students perform relatively well on these assessments, there is concern that schools are not preparing students to think flexibly and be adaptive in new learning situations--important skills for success in the 21st century workplace (e.g., Levy & Munane, 2004). Meeting the challenge of improving student learning will depend on substantial improvement in the quality of instruction and a change in teachers’ pedagogical practices.

School leadership is an essential component of the school improvement process. Unless school leaders practice in ways that support teacher learning, recent federal and state reform initiatives are likely to have marginal effect. Professional development and training programs are critical for refocusing school leadership on teaching and learning and helping principals help their teaching staff effect change to their instructional practices.

This notwithstanding, research (e.g., Goldring & Cohen-Vogel, 2000) indicates that professional development for educators and school leaders continues to be short-term, transient, and delivered in ways that are not current with knowledge about how people learn best (NRC, 2000). Furthermore we believe that school leaders will be challenged to discover new methods of learning and leading without first-hand experience with these methods.

This paper discusses a program, developed in collaboration with Microsoft’s Partners in Learning[2] (PIL), called the School Leader Development: Building 21st Century Schools program (hereafter, SLD program). The SLD program was developed to teach school leaders in the US and elsewhere around the world about new perspectives on leadership and learning, including emerging ideas on adaptive expertise and its development (Schwartz, Bransford, & Sears, 2005). In addition, the SLD program models what research suggests are effective ways to teach for learning and transfer.

The STAR.Legacy Learning Design

The SLD program uses the “STAR.Legacy” learning design (hereafter, Legacy; CTGV, 1997; Bransford, Vye, Bateman, Roseli, 2004; Schwartz, Lin, Brophy & Bransford, 1999). In Legacy, learning is organized around a central problem and a cycle of related inquiry activities. Prior research on Legacy and other approaches to problem-based learning (Barrows, 2000) suggests that this design helps students acquire longer-term learning gains and more flexible knowledge (CTGV, 1997; Hmelo-Silver, 2000; Hmelo, 1998; Martin, Rayne, Kemp, Hart & Diller, submitted; Pandy, Petrosino, Austin & Barr, 2004; Ravitz & Mergendoller, 2005; Vye, Martich & McBrian, 2003).

The Legacy design has been used in bioengineering education (Harris, Bransford & Brophy, 2002; Martin, Rayne, Kemp, Hart & Diller, submitted; Pandy, Petrosino, Austin & Barr, 2004), preservice teacher education (PT3 Group at Vanderbilt, 2003) and workplace learning for healthcare and engineering professionals (Vye, Martich & McBrian, 2003; O’Mahony et al., this session).

The SLD program builds upon another Legacy-based program, the Institute for School Leaders (ISL) program, developed for Tennessee school leaders by the Gates Foundation, State of Tennessee, and Vanderbilt University. Research on the ISL with more than 1800 school leaders indicates that the program resulted in significant and sustained changes in their self-reports of knowledge and beliefs about leadership and learning (Goldring & Vye, 2004). In addition, participants indicated that a significant aspect of the program was that it provided first-hand experience with using technology to advance learning.

The SLD Program

The major focus of the SLD program is the concept of adaptive expertise (Schwartz, Bransford & Sears, 2005), and ideas on pedagogy and school leadership for promoting adaptive expertise in learners. In this way, we hope that the program content targets issues of student learning that are of concern to a broad constituency of educational leaders.

The challenges related to adaptive expertise that learners solve are set-up in a multimedia vignette called “The Master Challenge”. The vignette features Principal Forester from Macon High School. Principal Forester had recently invited a group of former “star” students to speak at his school. Afterwards, the students talked with Principal Forester about problematic aspects of their education at Macon. Principal Forester is naturally very concerned about the issues that the students raised about teaching and learning at Macon, and embarks on a mission to better understand and improve things.

Challenges. The Master Challenge sets the broader context for 4 challenges that school leaders explore in succession:

• In Module 1-“How has the world changed, how have students changed, and how have schools changed (or not)?”

• In Module 2- “What are some key assumptions about what students need to learn for the 21st century that were stressed at Macon?” and “Are there alternative assumptions and strategies that Macon needs to adopt in order to help all its students succeed?”

• In Module 3-“List some innovative approaches to education and explain how they help people learn.”

• In Module 4-“What kind of leader is needed to begin and sustain change?” and “What ideas about leadership have you come across that could help Principal Forester and others like him across the country and around the world?”

For each challenge, learners a) first attempt to solve the problem based on what they already know (i.e., “Initial Thoughts”), b) review resources that provide information and perspectives on the challenge (i.e., “Resources”), c) reflect and revise their problem solutions based on what they learned from the resources (i.e., “Revised Thinking”) and d) articulate new ideas in the context of group discussion of the challenge (i.e., “Group Work”).

Figure 1 shows the challenge cycle interface for Module 4 on Leadership; learners access parts of the cycle by clicking the icons.

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Figure 1. Legacy Challenge Cycle

Articulating Initial Thoughts. After reviewing the challenge, learners first try to solve it based on what they already know and before reviewing content resources. [In the SLD program, learners click on “Initial Thoughts” to enter their initial ideas in an online notebook.]

Research by Schwartz and Bransford (1999) indicates that this is an effective “time for telling” information possibly because learners are in some kind of “need to know” state that makes them relatively more receptive or attentive to the content resources. Related to this, Martin, Petrosino, Rivale, Rayne, Pierson, Svihla, and Diller (this session) found that articulating initial thoughts causes learners to realize what they did not know. They differentially evaluated information resources that were presented afterwards; learners who said that they would not have thought of a resource on their own were also likely to rate that resource as more important and useful.

Resources. In “Resources”, the learner has access to a set of multimedia and print resources containing information relevant to solving the challenge. Ideally, learners have a copy of the SLD program running on a personal computer and can review the information resources at their own pace. [An electronic notebook is also provided here so that participants can easily record and print out their notes and ideas.] Table 1 lists the resources contained in the SLD.

Revised Thinking & Group Work. The Resources contain relevant perspectives and ideas about challenges, however learners need to “put the pieces” together by reflecting and organizing their ideas. They do this in the “Revised Thinking” and “Group Work” sections of the Challenge Cycle. In “Revised Thinking,” learners compare their early and later thoughts, and through the process can see how their thinking has changed. In “Group Work,” learners work in small group to discuss their insights about the challenges. These activities provide opportunities for further learning and reflection among participants that further deepen learning (Barron, Schwartz, Vye, Moore, Petrosino, Zech, Bransford & CTGV, 1997; Vye, Goldman,Voss, Hmelo, Williams & CTGV,1997). Facilitators play a key role in the process by promoting discussion among learners that highlights key concepts and conceptual “collisions”. [As in “Initial Thoughts,” these sections contain text fields where learners can record their ideas.]

One might well ask how a program that focuses on one American school can be relevant to other schools in and outside the US? One way this is addressed is that during Group Work participants discuss how the issues from the challenges compare to ones in their countries and their local strategies for addressing these issues.

Tying It All Together. At the end of the SLD, participants are asked to write about their insights from the program and their plans for follow-up with the SLD. This collection of international perspectives and plans is posted to PIL’s Innovative Teachers Network website and serves as an important resource later on for participants and other school leaders.

Microsoft’s Partners in Learning and Implementation of the SLD Program

As noted earlier, the SLD program was developed for Microsoft’s Partners in Learning (PIL), a world-wide initiative to help schools increase student learning through teacher development and leadership. Under PIL, Microsoft is partnering with Government, Ministries of Education, and other key stakeholders to offer a spectrum of education resources--tools, programs, and practices.

The SLD program is one of the suite of education resources available to school leaders for their school development efforts. The dissemination model for the SLD program is a “teach-the-teacher” model. Small groups of school leaders participate in an initial “teach-the-teacher” workshop that is sponsored by PIL. These individuals in turn become the teachers/facilitators for workshops in their local settings.

One key to the success of PIL’s efforts is that PIL provides on-going support for dissemination efforts after the initial “teach-the-teacher” workshop. This support is individualized to local needs/context. PIL also helps with localization of the materials which can include dubbing or sub-titling the program, and/or supplementing the resources with locally-relevant ones. In this way, PIL’s approach avoids the pitfalls of many reform efforts in this country where professional development is too-often “one-shot” and/or “one size fits all”.

The SLD in Pan-Asia

Since its completion in Spring 2005, SLD “teach-the-teacher” workshops have been conducted with groups from America, Pan-Asia, Western Europe, and South Africa.

We focus here on the implementation of the SLD program in Pan-Asia.

In August 2005, the first workshop using the SLD program was conducted with 65 school leaders (e.g., Principals, Administrative Personnel from State/Ministries of Education and LEAs, University Faculty, and so forth) and PIL members from Pan-Asia. Figure 2 shows the countries that participated in the workshop. The 2.5 day workshop was conducted by the team of SLD developers from the University of Washington’s COE (and paper authors). Half a day was devoted to each of the 4 modules. On the last half- day of the workshop, participants worked in “same country” teams to plan and present their ideas for follow-up with the SLD. Participants were each provided with individual laptops and head-sets to use during the workshop so they could individually view (and review) resources.

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Figure 2. Participating Countries and Percentage of Participants Comprising Pan-Asia School Leaders Workshop

At the end of the workshop, participants completed an evaluation survey. Survey results indicate that participants were very positive about the SLD program and their workshop experiences (see Figures 3 & 4), and felt well-prepared by the workshop to implement the program in their own country (see Figure 5).

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Figure 3. Participants’ Evaluation of SLD Materials

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Figure 4. Participants Evaluation of SLD Workshop

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Figure 5. Participant Ratings on Their Preparedness for Implementation

Participants’ comments on the workshop were suggestive of 2 primary themes; first, they recognized and saw value in how the program modeled the learning and teaching principles that were the focus of its content (i.e., ideas on adaptive expertise).

“The design embedded seamlessly the primary cognitive framework—balance between innovation and efficiency.” (J.L., Philippines)

“The whole course was well-designed and based on how we learn.” (Singapore)

“I have a new experience and method from the training. I am enjoying the joyful training.” (K.A., Indonesia)

A second theme was that participants liked interacting with and learning from participants from other countries.

“Highly interactive training. It is a rare opportunity to be interacting with people from other parts of the world.” (J.T., Australia)

“The interaction among participants was very useful. I appreciate [hearing] the Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan TIMMS experiences.” (L.C., Philippines)

Participants’ primary issue of concern was around localization of materials.

I would like to develop the leadership module to apply to our context. (A.D., Australia)

[We] need more examples or best-practices from Asia-Pacific. (Thailand)

Implementing the SLD Program in Hong Kong

Feedback from the Korea, Viet Nam, and Hong Kong indicates all have incorporated the SLD program into their country’s educational development efforts and plans. To better understand the nature of these efforts, we recently initiated follow-up interviews with PIL members. Here we discuss the case of Hong Kong, as described by their PIL manager, MM.

Hong Kong has successfully integrated the SLD within the government’s educational development organization. Since their “teach-the-teacher” workshop, Hong Kong has conducted 2 SLD workshops for principals, involving 13% of the approximately 1200 principals in Hong Kong. MM said that the first workshop was a “testing stone” for them. They had been given a 3-hour time slot in the government-sponsored educational development event. [Because their time was limited, they organized participants into groups and assigned a single SLD module to each group. Prior to the workshop, MM contacted prospective participants and asked them to be facilitators for individual workshop groups. She distributed pre-reading materials, including materials on how to be and effective facilitator.]

Based on the success of the first workshop, MM was able to arrange government co-branding for the second workshop. This time the government allotted 1.5 days of their event for the SLD program and recruitment was done through the government training-calendar. MM indicates that the principals have been extremely positive about their experiences and over 1/3 of them have volunteered to act as facilitators for subsequent workshops. MM plans to continue offering workshops to all interested principals.

At the conclusion of the second workshop, MM asked principals about their individual plans for follow-on:

“A lot of them, a lot of principals said that they would use part of the materials in their staff meetings for staff development in their schools. We have this organization called school sponsoring body—so we have a Buddhist group of schools and a Catholic group of schools, and these sponsoring bodies give them money to run their schools. And a lot of the participants said they wanted to give the materials to their school’s sponsoring body, so that the school sponsoring body would give them more resources to help them through this change so they could do more training and development.”

Several themes emerged in MM’s comments. The first relates to the need to localize the program. For the second Hong Kong workshop, the SLD program was supplemented with local resource materials. MM notes,

“One of our facilitators was a principal and he prepared a lot of local materials including local TV productions…He also brought along a lot of books that helped him as a principal. He shared one of Fullan’s books that he had read that he liked a lot.”

Although Hong Kong principals consider the American case of Macon High School to be relevant to their Hong Kong context, or at least, useful for stimulating discussion related to their context, they think that it is important to supplement the program’s resources with local materials and other important materials. MM said that one change or suggestion she had for PIL was that they put more resources into the creation of relevant, local content for the SLD program.

Another theme in MM’s comments is the value of the SLD program for providing opportunities for school leaders to share and discuss issues grounded in their personal experiences.

“So there was a lot of personal sharing and people loved that...the principal and the teacher managed to bring up their suffering and their learning which many people in the audience found very useful. People want practical experience—what other people have done that they can draw a parallel to. So that is why it is very important to put together good facilitator’s who are really in the field.”

When asked if other professional development session would provide similar opportunities for sharing among participants, MM said:

“Besides the sessions that we were running, there are other organizations running leadership workshops. I attended one of those commissioned by the government conducted by a local university; they demand 4 or 5 days over a 3 month period and they do some school visits as well. The workshop that I sat through I found it to be very theoretical. There was a lot of professor talking and you listening.”

“In our workshop about 20% of the talking is done by us and 50% is done by the principal. The other 30% is reviewing the resources, or doing discussion at their table or doing a big group presentation or sharing ideas or networking.”

“People like the workshop because you give them a platform where they can share.”

Previous work is suggestive that this “platform for sharing” that is established by the Legacy learning design may create social learning networks that persist after the workshop. In informal workplace environments especially, the establishment of these networks might represent significant “preparation for future learning” and development. When asked if the SLD created social learning networks that continued afterwards, MM indicated that she was hoping as much and that she was putting a lot of effort into establishing on online community (PIL’s Innovative Teachers Network) that would support continued learning and sharing.

As noted earlier, a number of the participants from the Pan-Asia “teach-the-teachers” workshop indicated that an important aspect of the SLD program is that it provides and effective model of learning with technology. MM reiterated this. When asked, ‘What if anything do you think the SLD materials allowed you do that you otherwise wouldn’t have been able to do?’, she said:

“The thing about it is the good framework that we can follow. It has a systematic or natural way of attacking the problem. It is a way to look at the technology first before they look at what is needed in the leadership. Puts the student in the front instead what the policy drives us to do.”

“People like to have this kind of structure. They also understand that the workshop does not provide them with a beautiful answer that they can just take away and use in their school. But they really liked the structure to help them think through the issues”.

One question that we, as developers, were particularly curious about was whether the issue of adaptive expertise would resonate with school leaders from other countries like Hong Kong where students already perform relatively well on international assessments. MM commented:

“Yes, the government put out an advertising to promote that, but they didn’t use the term adaptive expertise, they used the term continued learning throughout their lifetime. The material is very much in line with where the government policy is heading in Hong Kong.”

It will be interesting to explore more specifically how these concepts overlap in the Hong Kong context. More generally, we are interested to better understand the “fidelity” with which program concepts are communicated to participants and the nature of the local materials that are used to supplement the program—to what extent are these consistent with or do the build on concepts in the program?

In summary, Hong Kong appears to have been very successful in establishing a niche within their government for disseminating the materials to principals, who in turn have plans for further dissemination with teachers. The materials, although America-focused, are seen as relevant to Hong Kong principals, and where they “fall short”, have been supplemented with local resources. The learning design of the materials has created a unique professional development opportunity that is highly-interactive, provides a forum for problem-solving, and hopefully, establishes networks for continued learning after the program.

Based on the Hong Kong case, we are encouraged that the SLD program has the potential to leverage learning for school leaders. However, we also appreciate the significant role served by Hong Kong’s strategy and organizational capacity in the success of their dissemination efforts. Future work will involve collecting information from other participating countries so as to better understand and model effective dissemination processes.

References

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Table 1. Index & Run Times for Resources in Building 21st Century Schools

Module One: Dimensions of Change How the World Has Changed

Total Time for Module One Resources: 17:05

• “How Has the World Changed?” (2:48)

• Dr. Peter Vaill: “Today’s Whitewater World” (0:29)

• Dr. Tom Carroll: “Our Transformative Society” (1:07)

• “Technology Plateau?” (1:17)

• How Students Have Changed “Growing Up Digital” (3:49)

• “Changing Demographics” (1:46)

• How Schools Have Changed “Opportunities for Learning” (2:36)

• “Public Schools in America” (1:47)

• “Empty Children” (1:28)

Module Two: New Visions Key Assumptions About Learning

Total Time for Module Two Resources: 22:14

• “Macon High School’s Key Assumptions” (1:24)

• “Clarifying Learning Goals” (2:39)

• Alternative Assumptions and Strategies

• “Adaptive Expertise & Efficiency” (4:21)

• “Adaptive Expertise & Innovation” (2:34)

• “Combining Efficiency & Innovation” (4:49)

• “Aren’t Most People Adaptive Experts?” (1:54)

• “Should Teachers Be Adaptive Experts?” (3:57)

• “Summary: The Ability to Change” (0:36)

Module Three: Some Educational Possibilities Innovative Approaches to Education

Total Time for Module Three Resources: 25:48

• “Overview” (0:55)

• “Developing Adaptive Expertise” (5:16)

• “Examples From History” (5:58)

• “Examples from Science” (4:17)

• “Rethinking Technology Instruction” (3:43)

• “Learning Environments and Assumptions About Competence” (2:12)

• “Conveyor Belt Environments” (0:58)

• “An Alternative: Cyclical Environments” (2:29)

Module Four: Leadership to Begin and Sustain Change

Time for Module Four Resources: 25:21

• “Overview” (1:14)

• “Two Parts to Successful Reform” (1:49)

• Ideas About Leadership “Chaos vs. Coordinated Change” (1:38)

• “Shared Visions” (1:22)

• “Focusing on ‘The Right Stuff’” (1:50)

• “Making Progress Visible (2:38)

• “Distributed Leadership (1:59)

• “Leaders As Models for Others (1:06)

• “The ’How People Learn’ Framework” (0:23)

• “Knowledge-Centered” (2:08)

• “Learner-Centered” (1:40)

• “Assessment-Centered” (1:49)

• “Community-Centered” (0:32)

• “’How People Learn’ Summary” (1:28)

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[1] This paper was presented at the 2006 Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, CA. Inquiries to: nancyvye@u.washington.edu

[2] The goal of the Partners in Learning initiative is to help schools to increase student learning through teacher development and leadership. Through Partners in Learning, Microsoft is partnering with experts in education and curriculum development to deliver high-quality learning and development experiences for educators, resources to support success in the classroom and opportunities to network with colleagues.

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