 
Week 3 - Outcomes and Standards
|  | Developing a Knowledge Ecology: A New Role for Teachers |
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Listing of Papers | |
MS JENNY LEWIS
Queensland, Australia
ALTHOUGH TONKIN (cited in Groundwater-Smith and White, 1995, p.6) 'argues that the current institutional structures frustrate the ability of schools to innovate and change', there is identified localised but growing interest in school-based knowledge management and progressive frameworks of change management that cite continuous improvement as integral to whole school development.
Some schools have researched inclusive school improvement programs, and have begun to shift the process of change to enable the teachers to actually create it (House, cited in Lehman and Kane, 1981). They have found that shifting the development and responsibility of the accountability and improvement process, from the principal's office to the classroom, purposes the process for those it affects most, the teachers and the students.
This change has occurred as teachers have also begun to recognise that a core component of school accountability and knowledge management comes from within their classrooms. When teachers and students can gather and analyse the data that they collaboratively identify, a collective knowledge develops that, when applied, significantly improves student and school outcomes (Fullan, 1991).
These schools, with quality time, have evolved a knowledge baseline to their work and have assured that, as a learning community, decisions that affect everyone are collaboratively developed and made. These schools have developed a number of 'ecosystems' that combine to form 'knowledge ecology'. This process, in a variety of formats, is currently being designed and developed in schools. One such school is Noumea Public School, in NSW.
A Case Study - Noumea Public School
Noumea (a government primary school in the Mt Druitt District of New South Wales) is a growing Disadvantaged School with 510 students. Thirty per cent of its students are Polynesian and fifteen per cent are Aboriginal. The student population is transitional, with eighteen to twenty five per cent of students leaving and enrolling each year. Over the last five years the school has gone through significant change processes that have mined information, managed the correct data sources and collegially created knowledge that has significantly changed programs and processes. Decisions to change have been based upon mutual discussion, and the application of current learning theory and action research. The significance of the change processes reflects the teacher refocusing and reframing long-held beliefs, the building over time of a 'shared vision' and the move to a collaborative and collegial climate (Cuttance, 1995).
The development of six 'ecosystems' to sustain our 'knowledge ecology' has taken place over the last five years. These ecosystems support:
- an open and professional learning culture;
- the development of a 'learning community' philosophy; a systematic, practical and theoretical approach to outcomes-based education (learning platform);
- a shared responsibility in terms of organisational 'continuous improvement';
- an information technology platform;
- knowledge management strategies, that can take the intellectual capital and relationships within the school, and transform the school in terms of knowledge capital.
To ensure brevity, just three of the ecosystems are explored in this paper. The full paper can be obtained from the author.
1. Learning Platform
At the beginning of 1995 the school began to focus on data gathering and analysis as a mechanism for accurate resourcing and short and long-term planning. School-based research and a field gathering exercise encouraged a changed mindset to the way lessons were taught in the classroom. A shift to an outcomes-based approach, in terms of learning and behaviour, as advocated by Costa et al. (1992), Mamary (1991) and Spady (1994) saw the 'standardising of process and the differentiation of students based on their learning outcomes' (Middleton, 1997). Over time, the staff began to identify generic learnings as significant and began to focus on these areas in conjunction with the curriculum standards to 'appropriately differentiate the learning process according to the needs of the individual student' (Middleton, 1997).
The standards approach to curriculum was seen as logical, as teachers and students could collaboratively map student outcomes over time to quantify achievement and to determine 'value-addedness' (Beare, 1994; Murphy, 1992). This approach was then used to gather and analyse data in student welfare and standardised test data. During 1995 and 1996 this data was gathered manually and recorded on a database for analysis. As a 'learning community', staff and parents viewed and analysed these data and explored programs and resources to further improve student outcomes.
The school's decision in 1995 to create a new learning platform, and to embrace an outcomes approach, meant a significant change process for teachers, students and parents. For some, it meant a major shift in their educational platform (revolutionary) and for others it was the next logical step in their teaching journey (evolutionary).
It meant recognising that every student can be successful and that these incremental, individual successes should be celebrated. This has been achieved by shifting from a competitive learning environment to a co-operative learning environment, where the individual student learns at their personal performance level, and in ways that cater for individual learning styles, cultural backgrounds and personal circumstances.
It has also meant moving from a model of remediation to one of prevention and continuous improvement. An outcomes approach has enabled class-based reform and a placing of emphasis on more explicit learning outcomes. As our school established our learning platform, staff began to ask the questions:
- what do we want our students to know?
- when do want our students to know?
- how much should our students need to know?
- how well should they know?
The changed approach has also meant moving from an exclusive curriculum to an inclusive curriculum that provides sequentially planned units of work. This has been achieved through teachers collaboratively programming and developing integrated units of work. This has allowed the participation of every student in the learning process; the level of outcome to be achieved differentiated to ensure success. It has also meant changing the learning environment, from one of fear and failure, to one of trust and success. Teachers have established an explicit approach to learning, clearly articulating the outcome of a learning activity, and therefore ensuring student understanding before commencement of learning.
2 Continuous Improvement
Continuous improvement practices facilitate communication, co-operation, and co-ordination among all school stakeholders. As a change process, continuous improvement is most effective in improving existing processes that are fundamentally sound, but not performing in a changing environment. When implemented properly, continuous improvement results in ownership by those implementing the improvements and, therefore, come to feel ownership for the change. Consequently, the results from the improvements are more easily sustained. The employment of continuous improvement processes at Noumea have enabled:
- an efficient means of juggling vast amounts of data in a logical, cohesive fashion;
- change managers (teachers) throughout the school to see what is happening and understand the impact of providing better data to make better decisions;
- a focus on a more effective use of resources ensuring compatibility; and,
- the Noumea community to benchmark and target performance. These benchmarks and targets are critical in gauging the success or failure of current programs and processes.
Continuous improvement processes have enabled our school to effectively manage rapidly changing priorities, and ensure that resource allocation is in line with discontinuous change. Our knowledge ecosystems contain both learning and unlearning processes. These simultaneous processes are needed for assuring optimal efficiency based on current best practices, while ensuring that these practices are continuously re-examined for their currency. Continuously challenging 'the way we do things around here' ensures that we prevent the core capabilities of yesterday from becoming impediments for change tomorrow.
Managing Knowledge
In most modern industries knowledge is an important organisational asset, and the same is true for Noumea Public School. The networking of information, administration and communication technologies have provided the platform for best practice in this 'information age', but had not enabled a working knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of our organisation. Processes for ongoing knowledge creation were needed for organisational survival and accountability, if the organisation was to continually grow.
By recognising that the teachers and students were providing the indicators and solutions for whole school development and quality assurance processes, appropriate technology systems were investigated to simplify process so that the benchmarking, monitoring and analysis of programs did not detract from the classroom. The school required an information system that would assist staff and parents to review school data, would enable continuous construction and reconstruction of practices, and the learning and unlearning of organisational assumptions that had become established over time (Malhotra, 1998).
Noumea Public School has developed a practical state-of-the-art application that captures the intellectual knowledge of our organisation and moves the school from a 'community of learners' to a 'critical learning community'. It supports, as Spender suggests, the new virtual classroom and creates the positive shift from an instructivist model of teaching to a 'constructivist' model of learning, in which the learning process is controlled and 'built' by the learner (Spender, in Elsden, 1997, p.18). Our technology enhanced learning environment continues to build upon our learnings and now embraces the significant partnership of learning culture, knowledge management, learning, continuous improvement and learning community. Information technology provides a sound basis as the school aims to recreate itself as a knowledge ecology.
The staff at Noumea and a software developer developed our management information system. The program is written in Microsoft Access, and qualitatively (Microsoft Word) and quantitatively (Microsoft Excel) records individual student data that had been previously recorded to paper. As a teaching/learning model it allows the development of individual education programs (IEP) in terms of learning and behaviour and, as a continuous improvement model, allows teachers and administrators to create and manage knowledge about individual and cohort performance, and growth over time.
School Mate
Our management information system, known as SchoolMate, enables the teachers to continuously challenge current school and class-based knowledge and practices, ensuring yesterdays strengths do not become tomorrow's weaknesses. Its purpose is to enable the sharing and analysis of student and school information with teachers, students, parents and the system; and serves to define the potential of the organisation. There is now a move towards a tightly targeted, efficient learning outcomes approach that matches learning to school and state standards (Beare, 1994).
All student data are now stored on a central fileserver and can be collapsed, aggregated and interrogated in terms of learning and behaviour by class, grade, whole school, gender, ethnicity and age to determine program development and value-addedness. By electronically linking curriculum standards, learning support, assessment, student and teacher reflection, accountability and reporting practices, SchoolMate provides the integrated information necessary to improve educational and business process within the school.
Transforming Information into Knowledge
Knowledge, says Drucker (1994), is information that changes something or somebody, either by becoming grounds for actions, or by making an individual (or an institution) capable of different or more effective action. Schoolmates' report generator enables both the classroom teacher and the administrator to become 'knowledge intrapreneurs' (Malhoptra, 1998), providing new tools to identify, measure and report performance, to revise practice and to enhance the quality of policy and practice. It provides a number of opportunities for student and cohort data analysis by student, scholastic year, length of time at school, ethnicity and gender, and most importantly, growth over time.
SchoolMate
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