developing criticalfriendshipsupportingss
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Developing Critical FriendshipDeveloping Critical FriendshipSupporting Study SupportSupporting Study Support
QiSS Critical Friend Network
7th November 2008Robinson Executive Centre
Wyboston Lakes
Sue Swaffield
University of Cambridge
Overview
• Deepening understanding of critical friendship through the lens of leadership for learning principles
• Implications for QiSS Critical Friends• Role clarity - similarities and
differences with other roles
InternationalInternational
Context sensitiveContext sensitive
Value-basedValue-based
Action learningAction learning
CollaborativeCollaborative
Critical friendshipCritical friendship
Practical theoryPractical theory
CARPE VITAM: CARPE VITAM: Leadership for LearningLeadership for Learning
LEARNING
LEADERSHIP
LEARNINGActivityDispersed
LEADERSHIPActivityDistributed
AGENCY
LEARNINGActivityDispersed
LEADERSHIPActivityDistributed
AGENCY
MORAL PURPOSEMORAL PURPOSE
Five Principles for Practice
A Focus on Learning
Conditions for Learning
Dialogue
Shared Leadership
Shared Accountability
Leadership as activity
Learning as activityAgency
Focus o
n learning
Conditions for learning
Shared leadership
Dialogue
Sha
red
acco
unta
bilit
y
Moral PurposeM
oral PurposeM
oral
Pur
pose
Moral Purpose
1. Leadership for learning practice
involves maintaining a focus on learning
as an activity
A Focus on Learning
• Everyone is a learner
Interconnected levels of learning
Student learning
Professional learning
School learning
System learning
A Focus on Learning
• Everyone is a learner
• Learning relies on the effective interplay of social, emotional and cognitive processes
• The efficacy of learning is highly sensitive to the context and to the differing ways in which people learn
• The capacity for leadership arises out of powerful learning experiences
• Opportunities for leadership enhance learning
Focus on learningand critical friends
• Different conceptions of ‘learning’
• Critical friends’ learning
• Keeping learning as the focus, amongst the busyness and urgent pressures
2. Leadership for learning practice
involves creating conditions favourable
to learning as an activity
Conditions for Learning
Environment for learning
Material and physical space
Affective and cognitive skills and
dispositions
Cultural and structural conditions
Conditions for learning and critical friends
• TrustSafety to take risks, cope with failure, respond positively to new challenges
• Shared values
• Common understanding of purpose
• Knowing the contextBeing known
3. Leadership for learning practice
involves creating a dialogue
about leadership for learning
‘Meaning flowing through’not
Discussion – tearing to bits
Disciplined dialogue
Dialogue• Practice made explicit, discussable and
transferable
• Collective enquiry
• Coherence through sharing of values, understandings and practices
• Factors that inhibit and promote learning are examined and addressed
• Link between leadership and learning is a concern for all
• Different perspectives explored through networking across boundaries
Professionals in dialogue(Alexander, 2004)
• Listen without interruption?
• Respect other’s viewpoint, or status = wisdom?
• Collective problem solving, or own agendas?
• Stick to topic, or digress?
• Able to speculate without fear of being sidelined?
• Ask probing questions, or merely pass on ideas?
• Prepared to suspend disbelief in relation to the novel or unfamiliar?
• Take thinking forward, or going around in circles?
Dialogue and critical friends
• Initiating dialogue - drawing attention to good practice -> further enhancement
• Tools and routines for stimulating and enhancing dialogue
• Recognising the stages of developing dialogue
• Openness and willingness to engage and reframe
4. Leadership for learning practice
involves the sharing of leadership
Hierarchical structures + formal delegation
Fluid spontaneous dispersed forms of leadership
Sharing of leadership
• Structures support participation in developing learning communities
• Shared leadership symbolised in day-to-day flow of activities
• Everyone encouraged to take a lead as appropriate to task and context
• Everyone’s experience and expertise drawn on
• Collaborative activity across boundaries of subject, role and status valued and promoted
5. Leadership for learning practice
involves a shared sense of accountability
Shared sense of Accountability
• Systematic approach to self-evaluation embedded at every level
• Focus on evidence and its congruence with core values
• Shared approach to internal accountability a precondition of external accountability
• National policies recast in accordance with values• Choosing how to tell own story, taking account of
political realities• Continuing focus on sustainability, success and
leaving a legacy
What insights do the Leadership for Learning
principles provide for our work
as critical friends?
How does / cancritical friendship
contribute toorganisational improvement?
Critical friend SIPCoach
Mentor…
Critical friend SIPCoach
Mentor…
Critical friend SIPCoach
Mentor…
Similarities & differencesCF Mentor Coach SIP
Skills
Knowledge & experience
Power & authority / relative status
Accountability & loyality
Purpose Focus Boundaries
Locus of control
Underpinning theory of learning
Nature of relationship
Essential features of critical friendship
• Trust at the core
• Focuses on a professional endeavour, going beyond the individual
• Questioning to provoke insight and reflection is key process
• Provides an alternative perspective
• An element of detachment
Critical friendship:Some issues
• Selection and choice of critical friend• Establishing and sustaining the relationship,
especially trust• Purpose and focus; Boundaries• Too friendly or too critical?• Whose friend? Multiple or competing agendas?• Critical friends’ knowledge, experience and skills • Training and support
ReferencesAlexander, R. (2004) Towards dialogic teaching: rethinking
classroom talk. Cambridge: Dialogues.MacBeath, J., Frost, D., Swaffield, S. and Waterhouse, J. (2006) The
story of a seven country odyssey in search of a practical theory. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Faculty of Education.
MacBeath, J. and Dempster, N. (eds) (2008) Connecting Leadership and Learning: Principles for practice. London: Routledge.
Swaffield, S. (2007) What is distinctive about critical friendship? Paper presented at the 20th ICSEI, Portoroz.
Swaffield, S. (2008) Critical friendship, dialogue and learning, in the context of Leadership for Learning. School Leadership and Management 28 (4) 323-336.
www.leadershipforlearning.org.ukwww.educ.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/lfl/