Dr Dorothy Andrews
Lecturer, Faculty of Education, University of Southern Queensland, Australia

Marian Lewis
PhD Student, University of Southern Queensland, Australia

Re-imaging Schools: New Ways of Working in Schools of the Future

Abstract

The workshop will entail the presentation of the development of a 3 year Australian (Queensland) Research project on school devitalisation. The Workshop provides an overview of the process of school revitilization process (Part 1) and then will relate (Part 2) the experience of a professional learning community. This experience emerged from a school that had as its vision, Creating a School for the 21st Century.

Part 1: Re-Imaging Organisations: Using IDEAS and ideas to create distinctive schools for the future.

IDEAS (Innovative Designs for Enhancing Achievement in Schools) is a conceptual framework for re-vitalising schools through a re-imaging process called ideas (initiating, discovering, envisioning, actioning, sustaining). Underpinning the re-imaging process is school-based organisational `model' based on research. The process challenges the school community to reconceptualise the way they work, to build new relationships and for teachers to revitalise classrooms. The learning process, ideas, has as an outcome the development of a professional learning community and the emergence of a new culture. The process is managed through a mutual relationship between the leadership of teachers and the strategic leadership of the principal.

Part 2: Experience of a professional learning community: From shared understanding to Schoolwide practice.

Knowledge creation that enhances school outcomes through the actions of professional learning communities is well documented in the literature. However, organisations are complex, diverse systems and sustaining change and sharing the knowledge created by and within the organisation is as difficult as knowledge externally created and imposed.

This part of the workshop relates the experience of a group of teachers (the true believers) who created a new image for their organisation, a new way of conceptualising their work and then set about evangelising others in the organisation. Their experiences, as related, raise questions about managing complexity and engaging diversity throughout the organisation as it learns new ways of thinking and working.

Bionotes

Dr Dorothy Andrews BA.,Dip Ed., M Ed Studies., PhD. MACE. is a lecturer in Education and Education Administration at the University of Southern Queensland. As a member of the Leadership Research Institute at this University she has been involved in the research and development of school improvement processes with Queensland State Schools.

Marian Lewis, B.A. MEd Admin is a PhD student attached to the USQ-Leadership Research Institute. Her area of specialisation is knowledge creation in organisations.

Presentation Type
60 min. workshop

Presentation Equipment and Other Requests
Overhead projector

Speaking Date/Time Restrictions

Country
Australia