Innovation, leadership and
professional learning: choices and
consequences
Emeritus Professor Judyth Sachs
Macquarie University
Questions shaping the presentation
• What shapes our practice?
• How can we think about leadership and
professional learning in different ways?
• What choices can we make?
• What are the consequences of these for
teachers and students?
Policy focus
• Increased accountability
• Improved reporting to stakeholders
• Collecting evidence and data
• Using data effectively to make informed
decisions
• Increased school level responsibility for making
improvement happen
• More active involvement of leaders in
professional learning (theirs and teachers)
John Hattie argues
• How we think has major impact on how we
engage ourselves and others in our schools!
• It is a set of mind frames that underpin our every
action and decision in a school;
• it is a belief that we are evaluators, change
agents, adaptive learning experts, seekers of
feedback about our impact, engaged in dialogue
and challenge, and developers of trust with all,
and that we see opportunity in error, and are
keen to spread the message about the power,
fun, and impact that we have on learning.
Mindframes that underpin learning
My fundamental task is to evaluate the effect of my
teaching on students’ learning and achievement.
The success and failure of my students’ learning is about
what I do or don’t do. I am a change agent.
I want to talk more about learning than teaching.
Assessment is about my impact.
I teach through dialogue not monologue.
I enjoy the challenge and never retreat to “doing my best”.
It’s my role to develop positive relationships in class and
staffrooms.
I inform all about the language of learning.
But …
• Teachers and leaders are objectified
• Assumes all teachers are the same in their experience,
aspirations and behaviours
• Sees a direct causal relationship between the quality of
teaching and learning
• Only 30% of learning is down to the teacher and the rest is family
and social context
• Not just the feedback rather the teachers’ response to
feedback
• Sees the teacher in isolation from their schools, the
communicates in which they are located and the teachers’
personal and professional biography and experience
So the dilemma?
• Is the issue how people manage or how
they lead?
• There are challenges with both.
Manager or leader?
Manager
Leader
• Technical
• Visionary
• Plans
• Inspires
• Focuses on systems
• Focuses on people
• Has authority
• Has influence
• Asks how and when
• Asks why?
• Knows how its done
• Shows how its done
• Says ”I”
• Says “we”
• Does things right
• Does the right thing
maintenance
Types of leaders
Compliant
leaders
Collaborative
leaders
Innovation
leaders
Innovation
Controlled
leaders
Controlled leaders
• Focus on accountability and government
requirements
• Wary of change
• Technical approach and risk averse
• Good at developing systems
• Use tried and tested approaches in their schools
• Has authority – ‘the boss’
Compliant leaders
• Enact and interpret the government policy
agenda in an unproblematised way
• Sometimes find change difficult
• Existing practices are modified to comply
with government agenda
• Asks how and when
Collaborative leaders
• Focus on people and builds teams
• Creates an environment where asking ‘why’ is
important
• Works with colleagues and build consensus and
trust
• Models the type of behaviour that is expected in
the school
What are the capabilities for 21century
learning and teaching?
• Ways of Thinking: creativity and innovation; critical
thinking, problem solving, and decision-making; and
metacognition or learning to learn
• Ways of Working: communication and collaboration or
teamwork
• Tools for Working: information literacy and information
and communication technology (ICT) literacy
• Living in the World: citizenship, life and career skills, and
personal and social responsibility
Binkley, M., Erstad, O., Herman, J., Raizen, S., Ripley, M., & Rumble, M. (2010).
Defining 21st century skills. Assessment and teaching of 21st century skills draft white
paper. The University of Melbourne
Innovation leaders
• Transformative practices – change agents
• Visionaries – often far ahead of the teachers in
their schools
• Charismatic – visible inside and outside of the
school
• Thinks outside the box to solve problems
So where does this take us?
If we want new kinds of leaders in schools – teachers and
principals – what do we need to do?
Innovation leadership
• Innovative approach to leadership
• Leadership for innovation
Innovation leadership
An innovative approach to leadership.
• brings new thinking and different actions to
how you lead, manage, and go about your work.
…think differently about your role and the
challenges you and your organization face.
What can you do to break open entrenched,
intractable problems? How can you be agile and
quick in the absence of information or
predictability?
Leadership for innovation.
Leaders must learn how to create an organizational climate
where others apply innovative thinking to solve problems.
It is about growing a culture of innovation, not just hiring a
few creative outliers.
• How can you help others to think differently and work in new
ways to face challenges? What can be done to innovate when
all resources are stressed and constrained? How can you stay
alive and stay ahead of the game?
David Horth & Dan Buchner (2014) Innovative
Leadership: How to use innovation to lead
effectively, work collaboratively and drive results.
Centre for Creative Leadership
Innovation thinking
Traditional thinking
Innovation
• Logical
• Intuitive
• Deductive/inductive
• Abductive thinking
•
•
•
•
•
Requires “proof”
Looks for precedents
Quick to decide
a right or wrong way
Uncomfortable with
ambiguity
Wants results
• Asks ‘what if?’
• Unconstrained by past
• Multiple possibilities
• Always a better way
• Relishes ambiguity
• Wants meaning
Innovation thinking skills
• Paying attention
• Personalizing
• Imaging
• Serious play
• Collaborative inquiry
Innovation thinking skills
• Paying attention
• Notice what has gone unnoticed
• Look deeply into a situation, being a clear eyed observer• See the world ‘anew’
• Look for new patterns, details
• Personalizing
• Seeking insight from your experience
• Understanding ourselves and others in a deep and personal
way
• Draws on our interests, values, beliefs and perspectives in
order to understand what we do and how we do it
• How we relate this to understanding our colleagues, members
of the community pushes us to understand who they are and
how they live
Innovation thinking skills
• Imaging
• Processing information differently
• Stories, pictures, impressions, metaphors
• These are powerful tools for describing situations, constructing
ideas and communicating
• Serious play
• Bending the rules, branching out, having a sense of fun
• Experimentation and improvisation
• Collaborative inquiry
• Thoughtful sharing of ideas
• Process of sustained, effective dialogue with multiple
stakeholders
• Asking searching questions and exercising critical thinking
without always expecting answers
It follows then that
The combined application of these skills
• opens possibilities for new ideas and
understandings to emerge that fuel
innovation.
• ensures that leaders have a sound basis
for leading others in improving practice
What then are your choices as a leader?
• Remain comfortable?
• Take some calculated risks
• Go for broke
Professional learning for innovation
leaders
• Create opportunities to practice innovation
thinking skills
• Establish learning networks to pose and test new
ideas
• Develop new skills around social media – ask
students to teach you
• Improve technology literacy skills
• Establish your identity as an innovation leader
Consequences of making these choices
• Teachers are likely to be:
• More or less collaborative in their practices
• More or less open to risk taking in the classroom
• More or less confident to be creative in their thinking and behaviour
• More of less disposed to sharing their practices and contesting
ideas
• More or less open to change
• More or less confident to take responsibility for the consequences
of their actions in the classroom
• More or less persistent in the quest for continuous improvement
• More or less able to manage ambiguity and uncertainty in a fluid
policy environment
And for students this means
• More or less participation
• More or less dynamic relationships with
teachers
• A more or less inclusive school culture
But what we want is
• Better engagement
• Better learning
• Better experience
• Better outcomes
Thank you
Questions