Lincoln High School

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Leadership style

The teachers at Lincoln High School are on a rich learning journey to improve teaching and learning that requires a deep trust in each other. As change will not happen without the staff communicating effectively with each other and doing things together, I believe that it is important for me to facilitate that, to value people, and to help them to feel empowered and to feel that they belong here.

I have a real passion for the job and for teaching and learning. I am hands on and I think that has been an important aspect of my leadership. I also value positive criticism.

I prioritise reading, researching, meeting and talking with staff, and meeting with staff about our current school project. I choose to do this ahead of some of the administrative tasks that I used to do first. I also read professionally and really value the ideas of people I respect, such as Stephen Brookfield and the ideas in his book Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher.

I also work closely with colleagues from other schools. I believe it is important for all school leaders to get out amongst others and to talk with them about leadership practice, and to exchange professional ideas. I am involved with a stimulating mentor group who meet regularly. We trust each other to talk about school leadership and all the other day-to-day things that frustrate us.

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Where we are at

We have discovered the power of teacher learning. At the moment our school is on a learning journey and the staff are very aware of that. I think that the students are also beginning to realise that learning at Lincoln High School is changing.

We have been looking for the silver bullet about how to make a difference to students' learning. We started by asking the question "Can ICT make that difference?" We found that it does make a difference, but we also discovered that it was not the answer we were looking for. The silver bullet can be found in the teaching, and the teachers themselves. So our journey is to develop teachers so that we can make the difference to the student learning.

I have identified people among the staff who, I believe, are agents for change. For example, our project director, Grant Saul, who started out as our Information Technology (IT) person, has become a key driver for change in our school. He has become really passionate about teaching and learning. We have also developed a range of leaders in our school that may not have been seen as leaders of the school in the past.

There is a staff culture of innovation, and there is a growing excitement about how we are starting to make a difference with our students' learning. We notice that teachers who are deeply involved in our learning project have become more passionate and enthusiastic about their work.

I believe that we have a very positive school culture, and a friendly, supportive climate.

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Where my ideas come from

My practice is based on a set of beliefs. I believe, that, for effective change to occur, you need to have a collective focus and collaborative, de-privatised practices that are based on shared norms and values.

I believe it is important to recognise the importance of the journey rather than the destination and to recognise that the learning journey is a process of evolution not revolution.

Like others, I have seen leaders that I wish to aspire to and have taken things from them.

There is a significant body of research that suggests that, to make a real difference to teaching and learning, we need to form learning communities among the staff. So we have been looking for a model that has been used successfully to bring about that transformation to a learning community.

The work of Garmston and Wellman has influenced the way we work here and we have structured our model for developing a learning community around Senge's work, in particular "The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organisation. Of course, within a school, no one single model drives all that we do, but the five disciplines; personal mastery, shared vision, mental models, team learning and systems thinking provide the initial scaffolding which we add to and reshape.

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What we've been doing

Six years ago, teachers at Lincoln High School were concerned that many of our students lacked motivation. In our efforts to address this, we began by asking the question "How can information communication technology (ICT) improve teaching and learning? Through a process of reading, researching, and reflective discussion on our own experiences, our thinking has evolved, and we have come to use Peter Senge's The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of a Learning Organisation as a Model.

The dimension that distinguishes this type of learning from more traditional learning is the mastery of certain basic disciplines or "component technologies". Peter Senge's five basic disciplines that converge in innovate learning organisations are:

1. Systems thinking
2. Personal mastery
3. Mental models
4. Building shared vision
5. Team learning.

To come to this point, we began by forming a Professional Learning Group. This facilitated, cross-curricular group met fortnightly for an hour and a half after school for a year. They shared readings, trialled teaching strategies, but mostly talked and talked and talked about their own practice.

We now have a number of different learning teams operating in the school. These teams have a range of goals, from developing shared practices for a particular class to understanding behaviour. A professional learning programme supports each team. The learning teams are helping us to develop the personal mastery, mental models, and team learning disciplines of Senge's model. We are working towards our shared vision at teacher-only days and staff meetings, and developing our systems thinking approach at our leadership forums and within the management team.

We have also created some time for this initiative by using ICT to replace administrative meetings. Teacher laptops have played an important role in this strategy.

I make reading and researching a priority so that I am as much up to speed as I possibly can be about changes in teaching and learning. I have found that it really makes a difference when you research and read with other people. An online discussion forum within our school has facilitated this for me. It makes it much more fun, and it means that you can start applying the research ideas within your own practices.

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How do we know?

I don't know that I am making a difference! We are enjoying what we are doing here at school, there is no doubt about that, and that makes us feel good.

The success of our students in years to come will be a testament to whether or not we have been effective.

We have developed reflective practices throughout the school, so that we are continually reviewing our effectiveness. One of our challenges is that we believe that bringing about deep change to teaching and learning within the school will be a long process.

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Where to next?

As we are looking for changes to the intrinsic motivation of our students, we have been looking at why we are and how we are teaching. As a result of this review and reflection, we are only now discovering what is really going on in our school with teaching and learning.

We recognise that we are only really beginning the journey of becoming a learning community. The really exciting thing is that teachers have now discovered that we are actually exactly the same as our students. We need to be learners as well. And just like students don't like certain ways of learning, we don't either. We know this is a very important journey but a very long one, so we feel that we have to continue down the road to becoming a learning organisation and to continue to develop our interconnectedness.

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