changing curriculum, changing minds: the challenge of leading through the curriculum implementation...
TRANSCRIPT
Changing curriculum, changing minds:
The challenge of leading through the curriculum implementation
Jennifer Garvey Berger
22 August 2008
Agenda
What change needs to happen because of the new curriculum?
How does change like that happen, anyway?
How can a school leader support that sort of change?
New Curriculum = New challenges
What changes does the new curriculum call on us to make?
Key competencies
New options for schools to own the way the curriculum is delivered
New freedoms, less focus on outcome and more focus on life-long capacities
New ways for parents and community members to understand the work of schooling
And more…
Or not…
People are creatures of habit
“Why, you’re right. Tonight isn’t reading night, tonight is sex night.”
So what is a leader to do?
Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof. (John Kenneth Galbraith)
Two tiny experiments in mind changing
20th Century Leadership =command and control
Leaders are powerful Leaders have the answers Leaders tell others what to do A good leader controls things
as much as possible
We are reluctant to let go of the belief that if I am to care for something I must control it. (Peter Block)
21st Century School Leadership= Creating fertile ground for changing minds
What does it take for you to change your mind?
Think of the last time you changed your mind over something that wasn’t trivial. When was that?
What were the conditions in place that let you (forced you to?) change your mind?
Ingredients for mind changing Laugh a lot Make things visible Vision the future Celebrate failures Welcome shadows Tell change stories Mourn the loss of the old
Laughter is the closest distance between two people. (Victor Borge)
Make things visible
Moving things from unseen, unspoken, unconsidered is a key function of a 21st Century leader
The school subjects are of
central importance.
A school necessarily
must sort the more
able from the less able
School=
lots of
students
in a cl
assroom
with one
teacher
Subject-matter experts lead students towards greater expertise
All students are equal, but some are clearly more equal than others
A teacher is an
expert who knows
more than the
students
Vision the future
If you don’t know where you’re going, it’s hard to get there
Even an uncertain future can be described in part
A leader is one who has more faith in people than they do, and who holds opportunities open long enough for their competence to re-emerge. (Margaret Wheatley)
Celebrate failures Counterintuitive Vital because innovation requires failure Have to find a new way of dealing with the
inevitable
Success and failure. We think of them as opposites, but they're really not. They're companions—the hero and the sidekick. (Lawrence Shames)
Welcome shadows
Our psyches conspire to create a kind of immunity to change with protective forces battling with more adventurous ones
The things that stand in the way of change rarely show their faces to the light
It is in the dark that the scary things live—encourage people to look under the bed
Tell change stories
The human brain is fundamentally narrative—it is a narrative-generation machine
If people aren’t telling change stories, they are not learning change narratives. No change narratives, no change
Mourn the loss of the old
The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become. (Charles Du Bos)
Even in a change for the better, we lose what we once were
Loss: competence, role, certainty, self
Ingredients for mind changing Laugh a lot Make things visible Vision the future Celebrate failures Welcome shadows Tell change stories Mourn the loss of the old
All that is needed for a new universe
is a new mind. (William Carlos Williams)
An ability to embrace new ideas, routinely challenge old ones, and live with paradox will be the effective leaders premier trait. (Tom Peters)
I am convinced that if the rate of change inside an organization is less than the rate of change outside, the end is in sight. (Jack Welch)
The first criterion of success in any human activity, the necessary preliminary, whether to scientific discovery or to artistic vision, is intensity of attention, or less pompously, love. (W. H. Auden)
Of all the creatures of earth, only human beings can change their patterns. Man alone is the architect of his destiny. . . . Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives. -William James
Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on. (Samuel Butler)
For every complex problem, there is a simple solution that is elegant, easy to understand, and wrong. (H. L. Mencken)
Our minds are finite, and yet even in these circumstances of finitude we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite, and the purpose of human life is to grasp as much as we can out of that infinitude. (Alfred North Whitehead)
If you're not confused, you're not paying attention. (Tom Peters)
Learning is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century. (Perelman)
This is an important time for New Zealand education as we try to implement the new curriculum and take seriously the important changes it requires. We can either use this as an opportunity to create a new way of thinking about education, or we could let the daily pressures of schools take first priority and watch this chance for new ideas fade away. In this seminar, Jennifer will talk about what it really means to change your mind about curriculum—and how school leaders can help influence the changing minds in their schools and communities.