 
Week 3 - Outcomes and Standards
|  | Local School Management: Issues for Remote Schools |
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Listing of Papers | |
MR DANIEL ZOBEL
Northern Territory, Australia
IN THE LIGHT OF the recent decision of the new Government in Victoria to abolish the Self Governing Schools program it seems timely to re-evaluate the concept of the move towards more autonomous schools. In the Northern Territory a degree of financial devolution has been with us for some time, but it can be argued this has had little impact on student learning. We are now entering a more crucial phase of devolution. As the system level bureaucracy has been made smaller, and taken on a more loosely coupled structure, the imperative will be for schools to define their own structures. While this ultimately has the power to utilise teacher's creativity, the danger is that some schools will fail to develop their own structure and the educational focus of the school will become fragmented. Serious discussion of more autonomy for schools, however, must be based on improvements in student learning.
The Dimensions of the Problem
The issue of student outcomes is, at present, particularly pertinent in the Northern Territory, following the release of the most recent review of indigenous education conducted by former Senator Bob Collins. A number of reports have been published that show alarmingly low levels of literacy in Indigenous community schools. Data from the Collins review report indicates that 4% of Indigenous students in remote NT schools achieved the Year 5 national literacy benchmark, compared to 78% of non-Indigenous students across the Territory (NTDE, 1999, p. 35). Rose et al. (1999, p. 24) show that literacy skills of many remote indigenous students simply do not progress after several years of schooling (1999, pp. 24-5).
The recent NT indigenous education review argues that Year 7 level English literacy and numeracy are a necessary minimum for any person to function effectively in the wider Australian society. It also argues that a minimum of Year 10 level literacy and numeracy are required for any management role in the community (NTDE, 1999, p.17). Thus, for Indigenous Australians to become truly self-determining, educational outcomes must improve, considerations of school effectiveness, then, need to be structured around improvements in literacy and numeracy. The Collins report conveys some urgency about improving outcomes for indigenous students, and identifies the following key issues (NTDE 1999):
- erratic attendance by students;
- lack of consistent structured ESL programming and teaching;
- staff turnover; and,
- lack of effective management information systems to track student mobility and outcomes.
The report structures these issues in terms of long-term systemic failure to address the situation (NTDE 1999, p.1). The thrust of the solutions offered is, not surprisingly, systems-based. It is recommended that the NTDE establish a set of policies and procedures to ensure effective teaching, more community involvement and better targeting of resources. Before considering this in more detail, however, it is necessary to review how the problem of poor student outcomes has been constructed in different times and places.
The Structure of the Problem
One of the most pervasive problems has been identified as deficits in the students or their culture. While we have moved on from the belief that people of colour were innately less intelligent, as Partington (1998, p.16) points out, deficits in terms of socialisation/child rearing practices, home language background, lack of parental interest are still commonly held today with regard to indigenous students. A considerable amount of work has been done to show that, in fact, all children bring extensive linguistic and cultural resources to school. Furthermore, it is important to value these resources and harness them for learning, rather than structuring this difference as a deficit and attempting to compensate for it.
The Collins review, interestingly, tends to avoid finding deficits in the students, or their families. With regard to attendance and mobility, for example, the recommendations focus on poor student tracking systems in schools (NTDE 1999, p.14). The notion of deficits, however, has been transferred to the work of teachers. Deficits are seen to exist in the lack of ESL training, appropriate orientation, and structured language acquisition programs. The remedy proposed, or part of the remedy at least, is to apply more ESL training, and more prescriptive programming requirements (NTDE 1999, p. 135). This, is in spite of the fact that a considerable amount of funding and effort has gone into a variety of ESL professional development programs in recent years. In order to explore this view of the 'problem' it is necessary to put these remedies in the context of the effective schools research.
Effective Schools Research
School effectiveness has proven a complex concept to define. Chapman (1993, p.201) points out some of the contradictions inherent in a strictly positivist approach to determining effectiveness. Reid, Hopkins and Holly (1987) show that, at times, effective schools have been described as those with a good climate or culture, but point out the imprecision of this.
Clearly, if it is desired to find out what makes schools effective with the aim of being able to make ineffective schools effective, being able to recognise what an effective school 'feels' like is not enough. While it seems that many researchers agree that student outcomes in the academic areas of reading/writing and maths should be the ultimate indicator of school effectiveness, there seems less agreement on how to create an effective school. Owens (1995, p.308-311) believes the findings of effective schools research can be summarised into two major groups. Firstly, those that are more practical in nature and, he believes, more easily implemented. These include:
- a planned coordinated curriculum;
- parental involvement;
- school-wide recognition of academic success; and,
- emphasise/maximise time on teaching and learning.
And secondly, a more complex, but ultimately more powerful, group of characteristics:
- collaborative planning and sharing of knowledge/ideas;
sense of community;
- high achievable expectations and shared goals; and,
- order and discipline that promote the seriousness and purposefulness of the school.
The first group is more definable in practical terms, and it is thus not surprising that the Collins review recommendations focus on these areas. It may be arguable, however, that they are easier to implement. For those tempted to focus on more structural issues, however, Owens makes the following observations:
'The most crucial characteristics of a school are the attitudes and behaviours of the teachers, and other staff, not material things such as the size of its library or the age of the physical plant'.
Perhaps most important, the school accepts responsibility for the success or failure of the academic performance of the students. Students are firmly regarded as capable of learning regardless of their ethnicity, sex, home or cultural background, or family income (Owens 1995, p. 308).
Teachers Frustrated and Demoralised
Thus, while we may have an idea what some of the characteristics of effective schools, or effective teachers, are, the literature is vague on how to implement and manage change. Many teachers in remote Northern Territory schools feel frustrated and ineffective, but are unable to see ways to improve outcomes. This leads to demoralisation, fear of attempting change, and teachers developing defensive practices to protect themselves from pressures for change (Reynolds and Packer 1992, p.179-80). In many ways, I think many school staff are unused to the notion of change, and do not understand what change is. This raises the question as to whether significant change can be brought about through a systems approach; is it possible to change practice within the existing framework by developing and implementing new policies and procedures? This is closed systems thinking that has a very limited view of organisational learning (Lakomski and Haynes 1995, p.27).
While the Collins review report notes that the reconceptualisation required in education is profound (NTDE 1999, p. 136), as we have seen, the recommendations in the report deal mainly with systems issues. There is a tension inherent between many of the issues that arise in the body of the report and the systems approach of the recommendations. The review team saw many examples of good practice in individual schools, and sought ways to implement these in all schools. The approach proposed aims to diminish the effects of individual teachers by mandating effective system-wide approaches that teachers can implement, even if they don't understand the bigger picture. While this is a very tempting ambition, it perhaps ignores the issue that most of the best practice has been developed and implemented by individuals.
This tension between the need to structure learning for the students, and empower individual teachers to work effectively is, as Hargreaves (1994, p.47) puts it, a paradox of the postmodern age. A systems view that locates deficits at particular points in the system is unlikely to improve effectiveness significantly, as it does not take enough account of the systems dynamics. Understanding these dynamics is problematical, in part because it is increasingly less clear where the boundaries of the school as a system are, making the role of the school leader more and more complex (Campbell-Evans 1993, p.101).
Restructuring the Problem
Peterson, McCarthy and Elmore make the important observation that 'changing practice is primarily a problem of learning for teachers, not a problem of school-based organisation' (1996, p. 139). Dellar also makes the point that where school improvement has focused on structural and organisational change, it may not have much impact on classroom practice, and thus educational goals. He argues that school improvement efforts should focus on facilitating changes in teacher perceptions and beliefs (Dellar 1995, p. 23). Note, however, that the focus is not to rectify deficits in individuals.
If the problem is structured as one of organisational learning, the key task of the educational leader becomes facilitating teachers to become learners, both as individuals, and as part of a team. As we have seen, however, locating the problem in the teacher can result in attempts to 'pour in' some training through external professional development courses.
Peterson et al. argue that traditional staff development workshops are not effective in developing teachers as learners (1996, p. 147). Too many 'one off' workshops, without ongoing reflective practice, seems to lead to fragmentation of effort. Sparks and Hirsh (1997, p. 52) argue for 'job embedded' learning involving the ongoing use of the action learning model for staff development.
If we accept that education is not just a 'product' that can be brought into a community we need to recognise that effective teaching must involve developing partnerships, both within the community and linked to the broader context. The main paradox, however, involves establishing structures that utilise teacher's creativity within a guiding framework. It is doubtful that highly centralised bureaucracies will be responsive or flexible enough to develop effective partnerships within local contexts, yet the danger of too little structure is fragmentation of effort.
The Problem of Circular Loops
However, continual 'bottom up' attempts at change in individual schools often end up in circular loops as incoming staff need to reinvent what has gone before. One of the major problems facing remote schools is that it takes new staff many months to come to grips with understanding the knowledge their students have, and the kind of teaching required to attain outcomes. For a student who has several new teachers during their schooling, this often amounts to several years during which they are chronically under-challenged. So some degree of organisational framework for change is also required. While individual teachers may be effective at the classroom level, 'collective' whole school effectiveness needs efficient and flexible bureaucratic structures to support and organise the learning of individuals (Campbell-Evans 1993, p. 109).
In remote indigenous communities schools must not only form partnerships within the local community but ensure that local indigenous people become genuine stakeholders in their children's education. Much of the effectiveness literature discusses participative decision-making processes. However, developing shared decision-making is particularly complex in an indigenous school. The distribution of power within organisations does not always match up with the groups charged with making decisions. It is also clear that the different cultural groups have different criteria for making decisions on the same issues, though these criteria are rarely explicitly made clear.
Creating a Culture Without Blame
Leithwood and Jantzi (1990, p.254) argue that effective principals attempt to foster sustained growth in problem- solving capacities, and foster a culture in which it is recognised that the involvement of individuals in group processes produces more robust outcomes. Improvement in teaching practice is more likely to come from creating a culture without blame, where teachers are able to take responsibility for the outcomes of classroom work.
Teachers need to be involved in establishing the appropriate bureaucratic structures to support their work. As Fullan (1992, p.20) puts it, an educational leader is responsible for making vision-building a collective exercise, but also to create, maintain, and manage change.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Since moving to the Northern Territory from Victoria in 1994 I (Daniel Zobel) have worked in six Indigenous community schools in a variety of positions, including teacher, teacher-linguist in a bilingual school, and currently Principal of Gunbalanya Community Education Centre (CEC). Located at Kunbarllanjnja (or Oenpelli) in West Arnhemland, Gunbalanya CEC has an enrolment of around 240 students and offers programs ranging from preschool to a range of courses for secondary-aged students. Most students speak Kunwinjku as their first language. The role of professional development in school restructuring has been a particular focus of my work. Linking the work of teachers with each other, with the local community, and through formal partnerships with other agencies and universities has been a key feature of restructuring at Gunbalanya CEC. All the issues explored within the school have addressed the richness, complexity and conflicts involved in working in cross-cultural environment.
Daniel Zobel can be contacted by email at:
dzobel@topend.com.au
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REFERENCES
Campbell-Evans, G. (1993).'A values perspective on school-based management', in Dimmock, C. (ed.) School-Based Management and School Effectiveness. Routledge, London, pp. 92-113.
Chapman, J. (1993). 'Leadership, school based decision making and school effectiveness', in Dimmock, C., (ed.) School-based Management and School Effectiveness: Ideas for School Improvement, Routledge, London, pp. 201-218.
Dellar, G. (1995). 'The impact of school-based management on classroom practice at the secondary level', in Issues in Educational Research, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 23-34.
Fullan, M.G. (1992). 'Visions that blind', in Educational Leadership, vol. 49, no. 5, pp. 19-22.
Hargreaves, A. (1994). Changing Teachers, Changing Times, Cassell, London.
Lakomski G. & Haynes, F. (1995). 'Educational organisations as systems' in Educational Administration: An Australian Perspective, Evers, C.W. & Chapman, D. (eds) Allyn and Unwyn, St. Leonards, pp. 18-33.
Leithwood, K. & Jantzi, D. (1990).'Transformational Leadership: How Principals Can Help Reform School Cultures', in School Effectiveness and School Improvement, vol. 1, no. 4, pp. 249-280.
Northern Territory Department of Education (1999). Learning Lessons: An Independent Review of Indigenous Education in the Northern Territory, Darwin, NT.
Owens, R.G. (1995). Organisational Behaviour in Education, 5th ed., Allyn & Bacon, Boston.
Partington, G. (1998) 'No Simple Solutions Exist: Perspectives on Education as the Key to Change' in Partington, G. (ed.) Perspectives on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education, Social Science Press, NSW, pp. 2-26.
Peterson, P.L., McCarthy, S.J. & Elmore, R.E. (1996).'Learning from School Restructuring', in American Educational Research Journal, vol. 33, no. 1, pp. 119-153.
Reid, K., Hopkins, D. & Holly, P. (1987). Towards the Effective School: The Problems and Some Solutions, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, Ch. 1.
Reynolds, D. & Packer, A. 'School effectiveness and school improvement in the 1990s', in, Reynolds, D. & Cuttance, P. (eds) School Effectiveness: Research, Policy and Practice, Cassell, London, pp. 171-187.
Rose, D., Grey, B., and Cowey. W. (1999). 'Scaffolding Reading and Writing for Indigenous Children in School', in Wignell, P. (ed.) Double Power: English Literacy and Indigenous Education, Language Australia, Melbourne, pp.23-60.
Sparks, D. & Hirsh, S. (1997). A New Vision for Staff Development, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Alexandria, Virginia.
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