Leading teaching and learning workshop

The Leadership of Learning workshop was run by Roger Pope, Principal of Kingsbridge Community College in Devon and and Dr Martin Young, Headteacher of Cranford Park Primary, West London.

Martin opens by arguing that the core role of the head is to have a laser precise focus on your core business, which is teaching and learning. To do this well, he argues, you need a compelling vision, a coherent strategy and strong leadership.

At Cranford Park, the vision for the school is: everybody learning, every day, everywhere. The corridors, the entrance to the school, the playground, the changing rooms ... everywhere in the school must be a place where learning can take place and everybody in the organisation is considered a learner.

Martin and Roger offer a series of metaphors to discuss the role of the head and the leader in school.

For Martin, the leader is not unlike the football manager: it's about gearing people up, getting the team ready, establishing the tactics and letting go. You're occasionally on the pitch but your really key role is to watch and wait and reflect and then make the big decisions.

Roger compares the leadership of teaching and learning to riding a bike. When you first arrive in headship, make sure the bike gets a thorough check and is roadworthy. But then, the role of the head is to know when to turn the bike, to turn a corner and to change course. Changing course temporarily destabilises a bike and the good head must decide when is the right time to turn the bike, to destabilise the organisation and set it on a new direction and when to keep it going straight ahead.

Roger tells the story of various changes of direction he lead, towards personalised learning and later, at another turn, towards co-operative learning, inspired by the work of Dr Paul Kagan.

Martin builds on this argument about leading change and development by looking at the idea of the Sigmoid curve. This is the idea that at the beginning of a process of change, there is a dip in progress, which is then followed by a rise and improvement, which is later followed by a dip. So the key point is knowing when to jump off the curve and start a new curve. This is a judgement which is a key aspect of leadership: knowing when to leap when you feel that the progress isn't happening.



Martin tells the story of making the call to leap off the curve and start on a new curve towards personalised learning. He talks about making the judgement to leap off that curve towards targetted intervention and he is now considering when it will be right to leap off that curve and to make data management the big story. Having the confidence to make those decisions at the right time, and to make the right decisions for your context, are at the very core of leading improvements in teaching and learning.

Roger and Martin's very active and pacey session draws strongly on the work of David Souza on how the brain learns and on the work of Dr Spencer Kagan on co-operative learning. Roger's school has invested much time and energy in embedding Kagan's ideas of co-operative learning.

Since, as Souza's research indicates, we remember best what comes first, we remember second best what comes last and worst what happens just after the middle, Roger and Martin focus on what this means for how we structure lessons. They argue that new information should be introduced early and swiftly, very active learning should occur just after the middle and the end should again be used for further new information. Their workshop is also an active exemplification of the ideas of Souza and of the Kagan Institute.