School Culture: A Path To Change
The session opens with an opportunity for participants to establish that they wish to see change within education (why else would they be at this conference!), but that the path to change is fraught with danger.
Participants will be invited to reflect on and describe the culture that they experience within their own schools. Human Technologies (an ICHK curriculum) will be used to dig into what culture is, and how it acts as a shortcut to our thought, actions, teaching and learning. This section will apply lessons from anthropology, evolution, human history and psychology.
Group work will be used to move towards a consensus (hopefully) in terms of what changes participants would like to see in their schools, and the kind of culture that would support this.
ICHK will be used as a case study of evidence-based research being used to define a model of learners (what we call the 5+1 Model), which promotes the development of a desired culture. Once in place, the culture encourages and supports further innovations, reinforcing the culture in a virtuous cycle.
ICHK innovations, such as Human Technologies, Free Learning and Deep Learning will be unpacked as examples of successful change. Global initiatives, such as Mastery Transcript and Big History, will be considered as tools to build into a positive culture, once it is established (and not before!).
Teachers will group together to produce a short manifesto to present to their own school leadership, outlining their vision for school change.
Session Audience:
Whole School, School Leaders
Session Goals:
An understanding of why most school change is unsuccessful. An appreciation of the importance of culture. The sharing of a toolkit to aid thinking about long-term cultural change. Examples of working innovations which are reshaping schools, and hook into a positive culture. A desire to lead change within participants’ own schools.
Session Outcomes:
Participants will have reflected upon and discussed challenges within their own schools, and worked together to plot a way forward.
They will have learned from examples of successful innovation, empowered by a deliberately crafted school culture.
They will have produced a short manifesto to present to their own school leadership, outlining their vision for school change.
Presenter Bio:
Ross Parker is the Director of Technology, Pedagogy & Assessment at International College Hong Kong. He is passionate about making learning a positive, anxiety-free process centered around personal transformation. This requires re-imagining school as a place where adult-adult relationships create a culture of trust, respect and shared purpose.
An ICT teacher by training, Ross aims to offer learners a balanced view of technology in general, whilst encouraging individuals to understand, use, demystify and build computer technologies. An essential part of this is helping students, teachers and parents to understand the many and ancient connections between technology and being human.