Education is the ability to perceive the hidden connections between phenomena
Vaclav Havel
We live in interesting times. For more than two decades educational practitioners working in schools have been at the forefront of a national experiment in defining and assuring quality across the school system. The definition of quality has been externally created, modelled and then presented to schools in the form of standardised curricula, through nationally defined measures of leadership and headship (NCSL) and through the strict definition of performance standards which have been monitored through state managed inspectors - Ofsted.
The combination of these powerful measures has been widely commented upon elsewhere, but one prevailing impression is that education is now redefined, as Pring observes.
So mesmerised have we become with the importance of ‘cost efficiency’, ‘value for money’, productivity’, and ‘effectiveness’ that we have failed to see that the very nature of the enterprise of ‘an educational practice’ has been redefined. (Pring, R. (2000) Philosophy of Education Research. London: Continuum.)
Quality is an external matter, schools ‘deliver’ on quality boundaries defined beyond the school gates, they may tinker with it at the edges, but the message is clear, stray too far away from the state version of quality and you will be made to pay.
So it comes as little surprise that school self-evaluation is now well and truly back on the agenda. After all, why bother running a huge and expensive monitoring process when the vast majority of the schools are ‘on message’? Indeed, it is politically expedient to create the illusion that quality is now a matter of local taste, as this creates an illusion of freedom which for most of the profession’s collective memory is more of an historical oddity than a real feature of their educational practice and operational process.
But school self-evaluation represents a serious challenge. It offers a possibility, probably by accident more than design, for educators to take the empowering step of asking what they mean by quality in their own establishments and not succumbing to the brain numbing mediocrity of running a mini-Ofsted operation inside their own establishment. The choice is clear, do they use self-evaluation to really listen and attend to educational need, or will they simply replicate the model that asserts quality is something that someone else defines?
I would like to think that we might pitch for the former. In so doing it seems sensible to offer some pointers which might help a school to begin to take themselves seriously.
There are three simple tools that will be described here, each play a part in bringing the ‘self’ into self-evaluation.
Ensure full participation
Just because our last twenty years have created a repressed profession, the next twenty need not be defined through more of the same. This is a huge opportunity to revise - to re-vision the way school communicates to itself. So, as a matter of principle, if self-evaluation is to work for the benefit of the community of learners then it is imperative that the community of learners, and this means all learners, are represented in the conversation. You might start with a senior management agenda for self-evaluation, but pretty quickly you will want to know what students think, what the parents think, and what the rest of the staff think. Having a voice in the process of self-evaluation is not just the bricks and mortar of filling in a form and then being told that you were consulted. If self-evaluation is to become a valued, integral part of the way the community hears itself, then there needs to be buy in.
Use questions to generate enquiry and engagement
One starting point we have used regularly in the IQEA programme is to focus attention on what we mean by the quality of the learning experience. It is a good example of how a simple question can lead to profound set of actions leading to change. The lead question can be supported with a few pointers - what defines quality in our (key stage - department - classroom - entrance hall - parental outreach...) but our experience suggests that it is best to leave the specific focal areas to the people involved in the conversation.
Support people in hearing each other
Pay attention to group size when exploring questions, as people need to be able to hear each other. This is about meaning, not just words. They may need help with this, look at some of the work of the great writers such as Frijof Capra and David Bohm talking about Dialogue. It is through the word, that meanings are generated. People need time to explore ideas, to co-construct them and to then explore their possibility in the day to day life of the school.
Model enquiry as a shared process across all aspects of the self-evaluation
Self-evaluation can create huge logistical problems, after all, it may involve a lot of people exploring a shared issue on quality improvement over a period of time. We have found that having a simple, coherent method enables the self-evaluation process to function and provide required data to inform development at a later stage.
In the case of the IQEA programme this is formed through an action enquiry process taken through six stages of development:
introduction - explaining to all participants the way the self-evaluation is going to operate
preparing - Asking how we are going to start to do this work
gathering - how we might find out about areas of quality improvement
synthesising - how we interpret what we have found out
confronting -asking does this make good sense?
reconstructing - asking what does this mean to us and what will we no proceed to do as a result of our findings?
At the centre of these mini enquiries is the knowledge that they are part of a larger process, and driving this process is the search for the hidden connections that deepen our understanding and awareness of our roles and functions in serving learners in the school.
Time
School self-evaluation is not a quick fix. It is a way of thinking out loud together. This takes time to discover and takes time to nurture and maintain. However, it does bring rewards. The possibility that we are entering into a new phase of empowered, articulate advocates of locally defined and purposeful community embedded change is exciting, challenging and light years away from the given quality of the machine age. It is time we took this time seriously and use it to good effect for the sake of all learners in our communities.
Bohm, D. On Dialogue. London. Routledge
Capra, F. (2003) The hidden Connection. London. Flamingo
Pring, R. (2000) Philosophy of Education Research. London: Continuum.
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