If we can uncover what competencies, dispositions, and mindsets these thriving schools and districts possess, we can create a toolkit and training that might allow for other schools to shift their practice - not only in response to a pandemic - but to realize the change we need in schools to produce happy, engaged children who can author their own lives and make positive changes in the lives of others. At the same time, we will create educational institutions that are more resilient, adaptive, and responsive to meet the social, economic, technological, and political challenges now and in the future.
Initial Findings and Proposed Integrated Model of Learning Schools Now Available!
Based on interview data with school leaders at nine schools across Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Thailand, with the help of two colleagues, I have identified four themes that create the conditions for Learning Schools:
- Organizational Culture Matters, especially alignment in actions, artifacts, espoused values, and underlying beliefs and values. While each school has its own unique organizational culture, learning schools have cultures that promote and support leaderful practice and networked learning within and across traditional boundaries.
- The Disposition to be Knowledge Creators, not only consumers. Faced with challenges, leadership and faculty have the skills, capacity, and resources to generate new knowledge to solve existing and emerging problems. They don't wait to be sold a solution, they enact their own organizational future. Faculty and staff know how to act leaderfully and entrepreneurially, and the school formally supports the development of leaderful practice throughout the organization.
- An Orientation toward Organizational Learning, not only achieving short-term performance goals. These school communities embrace a design thinking mindset, are comfortable with ambiguity, and remain flexible amidst uncertainty. Moreover, clarity among organizational members that they are learning at work makes for an environment that supports piloting new ideas, receiving feedback, and continuously improving practices.
- Self- and Collective Efficacy among all stakeholders. Individually and collectively, organizational members believe they can "get the job done," that what they do is important and meaningful, and that they are adequately supported with the resources to fully live and execute the school's mission and vision.
This work was originally presented at the 21st Century Learning International Annual Conference in January 2021. It is an ongoing project and I intend to build upon the initial findings through engaging in more interviews, holding more panel discussions, publishing more articles, and workshopping particular findings to positively impact school communities across the world. Stay tuned for more!
Be sure to check out the full interviews below to hear the individual stories of schools and leaders about how their communities were built to learn and pivot before and throughout the pandemic!
Stephen Taylor, Director of Innovation in Learning & Teaching
Western Academy of Beijing (WAB)
Watch the full interview on YouTube by clicking the picture below or visiting https://youtu.be/dSqEN7QhyyI
Quick Insights & Highlights
- WAB’s strong community and commitment to transparent communication throughout the pandemic were assets for the school
- It was important to insist on consistency in the schedule, even if the schedule evolved over time, to support students and teachers
- The use of technology evolved over time, and will continue to evolve, to meet the needs of learners while consolidating the number of platforms/accounts
- “What it means to be a ‘WABby’ didn’t change, it just showed itself differently.”
- The culture of the organization, and the principles to which is it committed, didn’t change because of the pandemic
- Flow21 and WAB’s approach to what learning should like prepared the school, in part, for delivering student-centered learning in an online setting
- Collaborative teams thrived while cooperative teams needed coaching
- The culture of professional learning – WAB Labs – in which teachers teach teachers about new tools and approaches to teaching was strong throughout the pandemic and will continue to be important as faculty remain spread across the world and unable to access more traditional professional learning opportunities
- There was a rise in the number of champions among the faculty for particular topics and areas of interest/specialty
- The implicit value “teachers are professionals and have autonomy to modify assessments” was made explicit
- PYPx was a big winner for students, teachers, and the whole organization
- The pandemic redefined time and how we spend it learning and working – hopefully this sticks when things are “normal” again
Matt Scott, Associate Head of School
Avenues: World School, Shenzhen
Watch the full interview on YouTube by clicking the picture below or visiting https://youtu.be/c9cA-klvQpo
Quick Insights & Highlights:
- Taking care of people has remained at the forefront of Avenues decisions throughout the pandemic
- Avenues' organizational strategy is focused on organization health and creating a positive service value chain for stakeholders
- If you take care of your people, they will take care of curriculum, pedagogy, planning - all the things that go into teaching and learning
- The pandemic provides us with a case for the organization to demonstrate its core competencies – collaboration, resourcefulness, courage, adaptiveness, accountability, learning
- Avenues used the pandemic as an opportunity to try some programs/ideas that the organization has wanted to try for some time, but previously thought “too risky”
- e.g., A satellite campus in the Hampton's, getting upper school students out of the classroom part of the day and learning from anywhere
- Existing organizational structures made reorganizing easier for NYC campus
- e.g., Students shifting to Avenues Online, creating Avenues @ Home for the youngest learners, the extended learning team facilitating summer courses, and a central R&D team to capture all of this new data
- Parents now have a greater understanding of what Avenues means by transformative learning, not just going to school, because of the increased transparency of what learning looks like from learning at home.
Sandra Chow, Director of Innovation & Digital Learning
Keystone Academy, Beijing
Watch the full interview on YouTube by clicking the picture below or visiting https://youtu.be/mXcmT40UTFA
Quick Insights & Highlights:
- Transitioning to online learning sparked a desire to embrace change and engage in professional learning
- The power of professional networks and the willingness to share openly across schools influenced and improved Keystone’s online learning program
- Serving the immediate needs of faculty for connecting and communicating took priority in early days, followed by adding tools and improving online pedagogy
- The actions of the schools leaders, especially returning to China, acknowledging the challenge at hand, and creating space for disagreement in leadership meetings was important for testing and refining ideas
- Keystone Academy tapped in to the expertise of your diverse leadership to plan for and interpret notices from the local government
- Keystone Academy embraced design thinking throughout the transition to online learning, and the program went through many iterations based on feedback from stakeholders (parents, students, faculty)
- The pandemic resulted in new ways of on-boarding and acculturating new hires for the 2020-2021 school year through distance learning
Jeff Dungan, Elementary Technology Coach
Formerly Shanghai American School
Quick Insights & Highlights
- No school has the capacity to transition to a fully online model in a week - however, a culture of “everyone upping their game”, familiarity with tech integration, and SEL support at SAS helped with the transition
- Standardization of how teachers presented courses in LMS improved learner experience
- Having only a few platforms was helpful for learners to navigate the online experience
- The quality of the online program improved when
- It became apparent online teaching was not just temporary
- The school started offering more synchronous sessions and one-on-one time between teachers and students
- Everyone has emerged better practitioners from this pivot to online learning and into hybrid learning
- Jeff hopes that schools will explicitly teach skills for teachers and students to learn how to learn online because they will be expected to do so when they go to college
- Part of this is creating “intimate” learning spaces online (see Theory of Transactional Distance)
Mel Varga, Technology Integration Coordinator
The International School of Macao (TIS Macao)
Watch the full interview on YouTube by clicking the picture below or visiting https://youtu.be/AcUZpd2kxq4
Quick Insights & Highlights:
- The initial response to the pandemic at TIS Macao was characterized by a “feeling out period”
- Receiving and responding to feedback helped the school set clear expectations for students and teachers and issue clearer guidance and information to parents
- There was a genuine desire and need to find what worked the best for everyone in their unique circumstances. This included paring back what might be considered a “normal” workload
- As the organization learned from going online, TIS Macao focused on the quality of interactions more so than the quantity of interactions.
- The school had already started to invest in professional learning that required everyone be a Google Certified L1 Educator, and the school has seen steady growth of implementation since 2015
- This created capacity among existing staff for integrating technology and readied them with the confidence to learn new tools in a just-in-time format to meet needs as they arose
- Parents have more of an appreciation for the school and an understanding of the children as learners, and the role of teachers in their children’s lives
- Mel hopes to see screen recordings become a larger part of teacher practice when school opens in the fall
Ben Sheridan, Learning Innovation Coach, NIST International School, Bangkok
Cofounder, 407 Learning
Watch the full interview on YouTube by clicking the picture below or by visiting https://youtu.be/4QNN75GUMXE.
Quick Insights & Highlights:
- NIST puts people first – wellness, balance, and open dialogue - and a pandemic and the resulting shift to distance learning has not changed those commitments
- Distance learning created transparency in the learning process
- Parents had unprecedented access to what learning looks like
- NIST proactively planned for distance learning when it looked like there might be a need for it - This was a "win" for school leadership
- Despite distance learning being something new for the organization, NIST committed to doing no new things
- There was an emphasis on core systems and practices, communication, and not moving too much too soon.
- Trust and commitment to professional learning were already high in the organization, and NIST tapped into this to share practices, create an environment where it is okay to ask for help, and engage in collaborative planning and division of labor.
- The transition to online learning provided a case in which organizational culture became visible through behaviors
- The culture that was in place set the foundation for the specific responses to this unique situation
- The structures, not the tools, produced the outcomes
- Online learning required teachers to scale back on the amount of work they expected from students - but everyone will still working harder than ever
- NIST didn’t make big changes in the online learning program due to parent feedback; rather, relying on a clear set of signposts and milestones, the school educated the parent community on why distance learning looked the way it did, and the progress students were making towards learning goals
- Changes that did result from parent feedback included adding more optional social Zoom meetings for students
- Traditional email communication with parents was supplemented with visual communication to support understanding among parents about the new online learning program
- Feedback, lesson design, and collaboration were all winners in this
- Ben hopes to see the rich feedback “stick” when NIST returns to school in the fall.
Dr. Rich Kuder, Founding Lower and Middle School Division Head
Whittle School & Studios, Shenzhen Campus
Watch the full interview on YouTube by clicking the image below or by visiting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5WDeghMNEE
Quick Insights & Highlights
- Whittle Online needed to look and feel like Whittle On-Campus
- This includes the style of learning Whittle values and a focus on advisory and cultivating relationships between teachers and students
- Whittle engaged in many rounds of feedback surveys and established KPIs to respond to the needs of stakeholders (parents, students, teachers) and to evaluate the progress success of the online program.
- Whittle’s global network has empowered the creation of a 24-hour work cycle - Lessons learned in Shenzhen are being applied in DC
- Clear expectations and distributed leadership were important to the pivot to online learning
- As a start-up, the whole organization was accustomed to being all hands on deck, helping each other, and embracing a growth mindset
- Rich hopes that schools can continue to leverage technology to enhance learning, including the differentiation of assessments and effectively using the LMS, even in lower grades
- The advisory program was vital for supporting the social and emotional well-being of students, and requiring regular synchronous class, small group, and 1-on-1 meetings supported relationships
Dr. Kelly Grogan, Former Director of Innovation & Staff Learning
Chinese International School of Hong Kong (CIS HK)
Watch the full interview on YouTube by clicking the image below or by visiting https://youtu.be/R3ft15h-QhM
Quick Insights & Highlights
- CIS HK ensured clear communication by not changing the way the organization communicated with stakeholders (parents, teachers, students) pre-COVID-19.
- CIS HK made sure students had adequate tech support
- Department Heads and Year Leads were given more autonomy to focus on the learning that matters now
- Though on-campus learning was interrupted, compassion, caring, and community continued
- Because teachers were "untethered" from traditional classroom practices, they were able to up the amount of student voice and choice and design authentic performance-based assessments
- This was possible, in part, because teachers took collaboration to the next level
- Familiar practices, such as presenting faculty with data to discuss and make changes based on data, were still used (e.g., parent surveys)
- Reliable assessment data had to be collected and professional learning had to continue, but how students were assessed and how teachers engaged in professional learning looked different.
- Kelly recommends keeping tech and curriculum simple and responsive to the school community and its values
Greg Smith and Bob Stearns
International School Services (ISS) and Shekou International School
Watch the full interview on YouTube by clicking the image below or by visiting https://youtu.be/VKn3fB1VVYQ
Quick Insights & Highlights
- The pandemic has provided clarity on what school really is - a “concept of networking people”
- This became even more clear when school reopened and the joy students had “reconnecting with their tribe”
- It was imperative to support the whole school community by making sure there was clear communication and to focus on creating connections
- As leaders it was important to set the expectations for learning, but let experts , i.e., teachers, who you invested in with PD and tech resources, create the learning
- Previous conceptions of “we” and the parent-school relationship were insufficient
- Online learning provided a pathway for different learners to share their learning in different ways - "The introverts became extroverts” - and teachers were making sure to meet the individual needs of learners
- ISS and SIS are a community of reflective practitioners and have taken a learning stance through the pandemic
Learning and Thriving through COVID-19
Despite the idea of organizational learning being out there for at least 30 years, the art of being a learning organization remains largely aspirational for many firms. Schools are no exception to this. Despite schools being organizations where people learn, few schools or school districts are learning organizations.
UNESCO estimates that 1.37 billion children in 138 countries have been impacted by school closures due to COVID-19, accounting for 80% of the world’s students. This means that teachers, students, and school communities have had to change the way they deliver education, but how many are thriving at it, and how many are learning from this shock to the education system? There’s a big difference between change and learning.
Indeed, educators have been inundated with strategies and best practices for changing their normal classroom routines to accommodate for learning online with a never-ending stream of webinars, virtual conferences, and professional learning. Stories of successes (and failures) are overwhelming educators’ Twitter feeds and LinkedIn news feeds. And with the 2019-2020 school year drawing to a close in the northern hemisphere, experts are prognosticating what changes schools might need to make post-COVID-19 and how to adapt existing school structures to ensure the safety and well-being of children when they return to campus in the Fall.
While the online learning industry expects to grow into a $350 billion business by 2025, most schools and school districts will resume face-to-face instruction sooner or later. Much of what has changed in schools over the past few months will revert to pre-COVID-19 practices with 40-minute periods, siloed subjects, standardized testing, and age and seat time determining the instruction a child receives. While learning how to Zoom, Kahoot!, Padlet, Flipgrid, and Canva has been useful for teachers and students to stay connected and for the learning to continue during this pandemic, many of these specific practices and tools will eventually recede into the background and be remembered as ways school communities coped with the need to change for distance learning.
Therefore, we shouldn’t be overly interested in what changes schools have made to make a good online learning program or what digital tools will helped deliver their curriculum. This is what Chris Argrys and Donald Schon (1976) called single-loop learning, revising strategies and techniques to achieve better performance in a given system. In our current situation, this might look like schools devising systems to prevent cheating during online exams that include using a webcam to ensure the person taking the online exam is who they say they are.
Rather, we should look to the schools and districts that have engaged in double-loop learning, schools that have looked beyond simple problem-solving to reproduce their programs online and have instead questioned their underlying assumptions about what an education can and should look like. These schools and districts already possess the capacity to pivot quickly - and not only cope with the current situation - but engage in organizational learning and reimagine their education program to thrive through COVID-19.
If we can uncover what competencies, dispositions, and mindsets these thriving schools and districts possess, we can create a toolkit and training that might allow for other schools to shift their practice - not only in response to a pandemic - but to realize the change we need in schools to produce happy, engaged children who can author their own lives and make positive changes in the lives of others. At the same time, we will create educational institutions that are more resilient, adaptive, and responsive to meet the social, economic, technological, and political challenges now and in the future.
Let’s work together to make sure our “new normal” isn’t just school pre-COVID-19 with face masks. Instead, let’s look to our colleagues and schools who have learned through this pandemic to see how we can all do school better. I think I speak for everyone when I say I don’t want to wait for another pandemic to learn something about improving education.
UNESCO estimates that 1.37 billion children in 138 countries have been impacted by school closures due to COVID-19, accounting for 80% of the world’s students. This means that teachers, students, and school communities have had to change the way they deliver education, but how many are thriving at it, and how many are learning from this shock to the education system? There’s a big difference between change and learning.
Indeed, educators have been inundated with strategies and best practices for changing their normal classroom routines to accommodate for learning online with a never-ending stream of webinars, virtual conferences, and professional learning. Stories of successes (and failures) are overwhelming educators’ Twitter feeds and LinkedIn news feeds. And with the 2019-2020 school year drawing to a close in the northern hemisphere, experts are prognosticating what changes schools might need to make post-COVID-19 and how to adapt existing school structures to ensure the safety and well-being of children when they return to campus in the Fall.
While the online learning industry expects to grow into a $350 billion business by 2025, most schools and school districts will resume face-to-face instruction sooner or later. Much of what has changed in schools over the past few months will revert to pre-COVID-19 practices with 40-minute periods, siloed subjects, standardized testing, and age and seat time determining the instruction a child receives. While learning how to Zoom, Kahoot!, Padlet, Flipgrid, and Canva has been useful for teachers and students to stay connected and for the learning to continue during this pandemic, many of these specific practices and tools will eventually recede into the background and be remembered as ways school communities coped with the need to change for distance learning.
Therefore, we shouldn’t be overly interested in what changes schools have made to make a good online learning program or what digital tools will helped deliver their curriculum. This is what Chris Argrys and Donald Schon (1976) called single-loop learning, revising strategies and techniques to achieve better performance in a given system. In our current situation, this might look like schools devising systems to prevent cheating during online exams that include using a webcam to ensure the person taking the online exam is who they say they are.
Rather, we should look to the schools and districts that have engaged in double-loop learning, schools that have looked beyond simple problem-solving to reproduce their programs online and have instead questioned their underlying assumptions about what an education can and should look like. These schools and districts already possess the capacity to pivot quickly - and not only cope with the current situation - but engage in organizational learning and reimagine their education program to thrive through COVID-19.
If we can uncover what competencies, dispositions, and mindsets these thriving schools and districts possess, we can create a toolkit and training that might allow for other schools to shift their practice - not only in response to a pandemic - but to realize the change we need in schools to produce happy, engaged children who can author their own lives and make positive changes in the lives of others. At the same time, we will create educational institutions that are more resilient, adaptive, and responsive to meet the social, economic, technological, and political challenges now and in the future.
Let’s work together to make sure our “new normal” isn’t just school pre-COVID-19 with face masks. Instead, let’s look to our colleagues and schools who have learned through this pandemic to see how we can all do school better. I think I speak for everyone when I say I don’t want to wait for another pandemic to learn something about improving education.