Student Centred Leadership

After reading Viviane Robinson's Student Centred Leadership it has clarified what the 5 dimension Dimensions of Leadership are.  The dimensions tell us as leaders what to focus on to make an impact on student learning and teaching practice and the 3 leadership capabilities tell us how to do this (the important knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed to work in the school context).

Leadership goals for me include:

Capabilities:  Applying relevant knowledge (increasing pedagogical knowledge & curriculum understanding so when completing appraisals I can provide meaningful observations and evaluations that are aligned with quality teaching and learning, especially around our identified goals).  As part of building trust (with staff), having open learning conversations when dealing with performance or conflict.

Dimensions:  Dimension 3:  Ensuring Quality Teaching:  I would like to ensure what we are doing involves maximizing the time students are engaged with and being successful in the learning of important outcomes - opportunities to learn.  I, therefore, want to use the 4 questions/aspects of opportunity to learn with teachers and the conversations we have as we review lessons particularly around our inquiry (Storytelling, Daily 5 including reading and writing):

O2L #1:  The importance of the outcomes being pursued - questions to ask:  What are the intended learning outcomes for this lesson or unit of work?  Why are they important for these students at this time?

O2L #2:  Alignment of the activities and the resources with the outcomes - questions to ask:  How are these resources or activities intended to help the students achieve the anticipated outcomes?

O2L #3:  The behavioural and cognitive engagement of students - questions to ask:  How did these materials and activities build on the relevant prior knowledge, interests and experience of these groups or individual students?  How well were the students focused on the big ideas in the lesson?

O2L #4:  The students' success on the outcomes - questions to ask:  What do you know about how the students understood the big ideas?  What information do you have about how they achieved the intended learning outcomes?  What are their remaining misunderstandings?

Dimension 5:  Ensuring an orderly and safe environment:  I want to focus on student engagement and the 3 aspects of this - behavioural, emotional and cognitive engagement.  We have had some challenging behaviour from our boys and I feel that we need to work on engagement to try and turn some of this behaviour around.
Questions for me to ask and answer within our syndicate:
Are students cognitively engaged in the task, that is are they thinking about the concepts and skills they are supposed to be learning?  (Note:  too hard or too easy students disengage and become disruptive)
Is the task important to the students, that is are the tasks well-structured and connect with students prior experience and interests?   If yes, then students will be behaviourally engaged.  This includes an element of 'choice' and students knowing how they can be successful and how they are progressing towards achieving this.  (Note:  If students can't relate to the work will become disruptive)
Do we know our students and do they know we care about them?  This will lead to connectedness and emotional engagement.

"When teachers offer active learning opportunities and more student choice, student attendance increases and classroom disruption decreases."

Lastly, inviting and supporting parental involvement in the educational work of the classroom.  I plan on using parent-helps in maths and reading time to build engagement as well as finding out the skills and strengths of our families and community ties and bring them into the classroom to teach.  I want to build educational partnerships.