Purposeful Peer Interactions June 3, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Conference Sessions, Opinion.add a comment
Each Summer my school district hosts a institute for all of the principals, their assistants, and other educators involved with planning for the coming year. I missed the presentation yesterday by Bob Marzano, but was fortunate enough to catch the presentation by Michael Fullan. He’s a big name in the realm of change. Below are my notes from his session.
While this presentation was directed at school and district leadership, I couldn’t help the feeling that he was actually talking about the role of the teacher. After all, one way to look at the role of the teacher is for the teacher to be the leader in learning for the classroom. Especially when he said that the role of the leader is to cause purposeful peer interactions. Sounds like effective teaching to me.
How would you describe the role of a teacher? Are teachers seen as leaders in your building or district? Why or why not?
Six Secrets of change
1. love your employees as well as your customers – equal emphasis on all stakeholder groups – motivational working conditions
2. connect peers with purpose
3. capacity building (building capacity in others — support, guidance, encouragement) trumps judgmentalism
4. learning is the work
5. transparency rules
6. systems learn
Pathways problem – change factor vs. change process
What is change?
- new materials
- new behavior/practices
- new beliefs/understanding
Failure precedes success
Implementation dip means starting anything new always has problems
- dip is normal
- behaviors change before beliefs
- the size and prettiness of the planning document is inversely related to the quality of action and student learning
- shared vision or ownership is more an outcome of a quality process than it is a precondition
Change isn’t about individual schools, it is about the whole district.
Tie learning, collaboration, and data together.
Dimensions of Relational Coordination (Gittell, 2003) Comparison of American Airlines with Southwest Airlines
Relationships
- shared goals
- shared knowledge
- mutual respect
Communications
- frequent and timely communication
- problem-solving communication
Motivational work
- meaningful, accomplishable work
- enables development
- sense of camaraderie
- being well led
The role of leadership is to cause purposeful peer interaction.
