Busy-ness/Business as Usual Busy-ness/Business as Usual? Potential for the School Leader Quality Standard to Impact Teaching and Learning Pamela Adams, Ph.D. Faculty of Education/School of Graduate Studies University of Lethbridge

Re-thinking Business as Usual What does ‘business as usual’ look like? Why do we ‘do’ leadership the way it is often presently enacted at the system and school level? What do leaders of learning do differently? In what ways can we re-imagine how the School Leadership Quality Standard and the Teaching Quality Standard could be implemented?

Paradoxical Intentions Viktor Frankl (1946): Man’s Search for Ultimate Meaning Brainstorm the processes, structures, or practices that will almost certainly ensure that implementation of a SLQS or TQS will fail?

Checking Assumptions to Avoid the Magic Table https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqQgDwA0BNU

Checking my Assumptions Formal and informal leaders can, and must, impact the quality of teaching and learning in schools. Leaders are not always efficacious in orchestrating the professional learning in ways that will enhance student learning. Facilitating the professional learning of school leaders and teachers is often not coordinated, purposeful, and comprehensive.

Paradigms that Guide Implementation of Initiatives such as the SLQS/TQS: Rationalist Implementation As Associative Implementation As Constructivist

The Exploration Begins: 2000 - 2010: 142 schools in AISI, Rocky View School Division, Calgary Professional Development Consortium Science Lead Teachers, Spirit of Leadership in Alberta What conditions/practices facilitate implementation of change initiatives? What does teacher learning look like? What does school leader learning look like? 2010 - 2014: Chinook’s Edge School Division In what ways does implementation of a comprehensive and coordinated professional learning plan impact teaching and leading practices? 2012: 2013: Westwind School Division In what ways does an inquiry-based professional learning model impact implementation of the Principal Quality Standard and the Teaching Quality Standard?

2014 - 2016: Red Deer Public School District What types of impacts can system leaders have when they implement and sustain a collaborative inquiry model of school leadership development? 2015 - 2017: Northern Lights School Division In what ways does a relentless focus on instructional leadership impact teaching and student learning? 2016 - present: Northern Coast Initiative for School Improvement In what ways does school leaders’ use of an inquiry-based professional learning model facilitate implementation of the Australian Teaching Standards? 2016 – 2018: Greater Victoria Public School District In what ways does implementation of an inquiry-based model of professional learning impact school leaders’ efficacy?

Guiding Principles for Implementing the SLQS/TQS Learning is a process of growth rather than an episode or event All participants are competent Judgment and criticism do not enhance professional practice Learning is a collaborative process Effective leading is necessarily distributed and often democratized The moral imperative of leading learning is to impact student learning as directly as possible Leading learning causes reflective action that results in conscious competence Central office has a critical role in modeling the leadership of learning Educators’ professional practice is enhanced through an ethos of shared responsibility

LEARNING TO LEAD & LEADING LEARNING: SHIFTING TO AN INQUIRY-BASED MODEL Episodic Sustained/Cyclical External Accountability Shared Responsibility Offsite Site-embedded Industrial Differentiated Didactic Reflective Competitive Collaborative Depersonalized Contextualized/Differentiated Privatized Knowledge Shared Knowledge

Leading Learning in Your Context: Table Talk Describe learning that you have facilitated or participated in that included one or more of these characteristics: Cyclical and Sustained Site-embedded/job-embedded Collaborative Sense of ownership/shared responsibility Differentiated Reflective Shared knowledge

Re-thinking Business as Usual What can you do differently when implementing the Standards?

Feel free to contact me at: adams@uleth.ca 40303304070