Understand the Challenge of Improvement (Chapter 2)

When starting this chapter I found it a little confusing. The language of espoused and used theory and looping completely through me. That was until I got to page 20 and started relating the chapter to our introduction of the EMU strategies almost 7 years ago. As a school we sent people to be trained as leaders and specialists because the Diocese required it of our school/s because the data in numeracy needed to improve. Teachers values and beliefs were not taken into account at the Diocesan level but for implementation to be successful schools had to consider how best to move the school forward. Teachers who were the most successful in their implementation were the ones who wanted to do better than they had been up until that point and were open to change including the use of rich tasks, using data to drive the learning and allowing the students to verbalise their thinking to each other throughout the lesson and to the class during reflections. Others felt that what they were doing was working in its current form and therefore why change. It is important for any change to be successful that we need to meet teachers where they are at. Change cannot be forced or imposed if it is to impact on learning and leaders need to support staff by designing professional learning opportunities to build capacity. Leaders need to know their staff and give them a voice if implementation is to be successful. Collaboration and consultation needs to be included as part of any successful change.