A short summary of the past few months in my TL life –

After a marathon run of fifteen meetings, the decision-making working party finally worked through the process to a chosen solution which involves a re-working of the management system and splitting the management into educational and business sections. Like many other schools they have chosen to look for a business manager to handle some of the myriad of tasks that need doing as well as many other changes. My job as a facilitator to the group finished a fortnight ago and I have put the group in contact with some professional change facilitators to help them formulate a 5 year strategic plan which is what Step 6– Implementation of the Decision Making process will involve for them.

Implementation is of course the most challenging of the steps in the process – the time for talk is finished and the doing must happen. In an initial meeting with the two change facilitators, they emphasised to me that the solution the group chose involved changing the school’s culture not just implementing innovations, changing the way we do things not just what we do. It really harkened back to the main message in Michael Fullan’s books.

In the more hands-on sphere of this TL we had the building that held the little library at our school demolished to make way for a new set of classrooms and the library moved into a portable. The whole process was very poorly timed – no notification as to when the demolition would happen until two weeks before the demolition. School did not hire movers or allow for any over-time so … let’s just say summer holidays were most welcome!

I managed to throw a few photos up on flickr.

The portable was meant to be a temporary home for the library for the next two to three years. That is until our Prime Minister, Mr Rudd announced the Building the Education Revolution (BER) plan. While our school opted not to apply for major funding for a new library (they went for a multi-purpose building), they did apply and receive the renovation/capital works grant to ‘do up’ one of the existing buildings to house the library permanently. This will mean another move in December, hopefully at a more leisurely pace.

I’ve continued to push for Web 2.0 integration into our school and have had the pleasure of being the first to acquire an IWB thanks to a bargain on E-bay! A small demo model came up for auction and I was able to ’snipe’ it for just over $300 – bargain! It arrived and was installed by a most obliging husband (Thanks, BH!). All this happened just in time for my first collaborative project with the Year 5/6 teacher. The class has embarked on the IASL’s wonderful GiggleIT project.

So,things are really starting to bubble along. Exciting times ahead!

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Photo from: Marc Shandro’s Flickr photostream

Fullan’s (2004) Leading in a Culture of Change asks the reader to consider the statement “Information is not pertinent until people decide what it means and why it matters.” Also to consider “It is a mistake to focus on information rather than its use.” Oh how I wish someone had explained that to my maths teachers way back then. If only they had thought to spend time sharing the ’secret’ of the why as well as the how. Without a use, the information on how to do the procedures never turned into learning, I gained no knowledge from the time spent in class.

Education is now making the shift from an emphasis on distributing facts (information) to creating and sharing knowledge. And creating a culture of sharing is one of the jobs of a leader. Fullan suggests that the conditions have to be right in order for this to occur. Quality relationships is the key, of course.

What interested me the most in this chapter  was Fullan’s take on the relationship between good relationships and a culture of knowledge sharing.  He cited Dixon’s observation that

… the exchange of knowledge happens only in organizations that have a noncompetitive or a collaborative culture. It follows that the first thing you have to do is to fix the culture and then get people to share. But I have found that it’s the other way around. If people begin sharing ideas about issues they see as really important, the sharing itself creates a learning culture. I have, of course, inserted an important caveat in that sentence: “about issues they see as really important” (Dixon as cited in Fullan, 2004, p. 124).

It interested me to compare it with an earlier blog quote I had

… many persons express the conviction that effective human relationships improve communication far more than communication improves relationships. (Savage, 1989, p. 109)

Do they contradict each other? If so which is right? What needs to be tackled first; relationship-building or communication/sharing?

Its one of those cyclic issues and perhaps that’s one of the reasons that collaborative cultures don’t develop easily. No one knows if its OK to start or where to start. In fact my own experience (tacit knowledge!) has been exactly that, no one wants to be the first. This is one of the places in which TLs can really take a lead. Someone has to break the ice, step up to the plate, lay their cards on the table and we have the training to do it.

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/salmon/463619313/

Fullan, M. (2004). Building relationships. In Leading in a culture of change: Personal action guide and workbook (pp. 77-114). San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

Savage, W. (1989). Communication: Process and problems. In C. Riches & C. Morgan (Eds.), Human resource management in education (pp. 103-119). Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

The word that gets the most focus in this term is ‘leading’. While many, many articles are written outlining how TLs can lead and mention facilitation, building influence, collaboration and partnerships, I wonder if the message is getting drowned out in the desperation of our profession to be recognized, and legitimized and ultimately retained as important contributors to the school. So is the part of the message that is most agressively promoted and received ‘Lead’? It is very easy to fall into the trap of trying to get out in front and organize people in an attempt to raise the visibility of the TL. This can be stepping into the area of the least effective types of leadership style — Coercive and Pacesetting leadership.

TLs need to be mindful of the fact that they are in a partnership with teachers and that teachers are leaders too. In the end, teachers are the ones in the classrooms and at this stage, are the main delivery agents and biggest influence on students’ learning.

Fullan states that:

Although you cannot direct outcomes, you can set up conditions that help to guide the process. ‘The challenge is to disturb them in a manner that approximates the desired outcomes’ (Pascale, Millemann and Gioja, 2000) (Fullan, 2005, p. 57)

I am coming to appreciate and believe in the more positive power of ‘influencing’ – and see it as an art worth cultivating.

In a presentation to the School Library Association of Victoria (SLAV) in 2005, Ross put forward a question that needed to be asked.

What constitutes effective shared teacher & librarian-teacher pedagogy and leading of learning through partnerships?

In his talk he called for a shift in the focus to a more cohesive view of learning and onto the library as a key learning environment. He suggests:

Stop talking about collaboration

Stop talking about information literacy

Stop talking about research projects

Stop talking about roles of teacher librarians

Start talking about guided inquiry through information resources

Start talking knowledge outcomes, not information literacy outcomes

Start talking about intellectual quality of learning

Start taking about libraries as quality teaching environments, not resource environments

Start talking the leading of learning through the library

You are the information-learning specialist, working with partner-leaders to lead learning through complex and diverse resources, enabling your students to develop deep understanding of their curriculum topics.

I think this more mature view reflects an acceptance on the part of TLs that they are an integral part of the learning team and can focus their attention on the task at hand rather than on their role in it. And self acceptance is always going to gain the respect of others.

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Fullan, M. (2004). Understanding change. In Leading in a culture of change: Personal action guide and workbook (pp. 39-77). San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

Todd, R. (2005, August). School libraries, productive pedagogy and the leading of learning [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved August 21, 2008, from School Library Association of Victoria Web site: http://www.slav.schools.net.au/pastp.html

http://www.flickr.com/photos/suteki/475093875/

This idea came to me when I was working on part of the collaborative project for ETL504 and was pondering the question from Montiel-Overall — what form of collaboration should TLs be involved in given limited resources (Montiel-Overall, 2005, p.41). I started thinking that bringing about collaboration is a very complex undertaking. Are TLs being encouraged to try to be ’super-human’ by the academics? Like the assignment in talking about Standards of Excellence, is it all expecting more than is possible? Which got me thinking about Coveys Circle of Influence and Concern and the proactivity thing.

Proactive people focus their efforts in the Circle of Influence. They work on the things they can do something about. The nature of their energy is positive, enlarging and magnifying, causing their circle of Influence to increase.

Reactive people, on the other hand, focus their efforts in the Circle of Concern. They focus on the weakness of other people, the problems in the environment and circumstances over which they have no control. …[which] causes their Circle of Influence to shrink.” (Covey, 1990, p.83).

I started thinking about the things we TLs had the most influence over and those we had less influence over. Is this a strategy? To work from the inner circle out? This probably isnt complete but gave me an original perspective on things that might be useful in addressing THE question — “How can TL’s influence teachers to collaborate with them?”

Covey, S. (1990). Habit 1: Be proactive. In The 7 habits of highly effective people: Powerful lessons in personal change (pp. 65-94). New York: Fireside.

Montiel-Overall, P. (2005). A theoretical understanding of teacher and librarian collaboration. School Libraries Worldwide, 11(2), 24-48. Retrieved August 5, 2008, from Emerald Insight database.

Everyone quickly learns when they enter the workforce that some bosses/principals are easier to get along with than others. We also quickly figure out that the ones easiest to get along with aren’t necessarily the best bosses/principals to work for. Leadership styles of course are what make the difference.

What I appreciated from Fullan was the idea a good leader doesn’t have ‘a style’; that different styles are needed for different situations.

The six styles of leadership as identfied by Golemen (cited by Fullan, 2004, p.43) are:

• Coercive — demands compliance (”Do as I say”)
• Authoritative — mobilizes people towards a vision or goal (”Come on, follow me, let’s go”) (How strange, I’ve just realized the root of that word is ‘author’ like a creator or maker)
• Affiliative — harmonizer and relationship builder (”People are most important”)
• Democratic — works for consensus through participation (”What are your thoughts on … “)
• Pacesetting — sets high standards for self then expects others to follow (”Do as I do, now”)
• Coaching — develops people for the future well-being of the organisation (”Try this”)

Fullan goes on to point out that two of those styles will negatively impact on school climate which of course impacts everything else: coercive and pace-setting.

The point to ponder in this section is –

Can you think of a real life example of a pacesetter leader? What is or was the effect of this leader on organizational performance and morale.

Well now I have to confess that I made a lame effort at being a pacesetter last year at the school. I was feeling frustrated with the lack of interest on the part of the teachers in learning to use web 2.0 technologies to motivate and engage students. I began to set up all kinds of things for the teachers and students to use beyond their email (used by teachers only). I spoke about them at staff meetings, I attempted to set up tutoring sessions to show them how, I even went into classes to show the students how to use some of the tools. I somehow thought that if they saw all these wonderful things the teachers would feel 1) that they were missing out on something, 2) that they’d better do something about it because the students were missing out on something.

Effect on organisational performance and morale? None.

Personal result? Exhausted from getting no where and the realization that you are only a leader if someone comes with you. =)

I think there is a lesson here about collaboration too. Professional articles say we should be working in collaboration with teachers but most TLs do not experience collaboration. Many TLs are not even seen as leaders or equals in the teaching profession.

We are also told to lead from the middle. Will leading from the middle accomplish collaboration? I wonder what style or combination of styles are necessary to lead from the middle?

I’m leaning at the moment towards affiliative leadership being pretty important in making progress towards collaboration. We perhaps need to work on building relationships first, to bond with teachers. Teachers are particularily autonomous and many academics have pointed out that educational change is slow because of this autonomous culture (Joyce, 2004; Little, 1990; Cooper, 1988; Horton, n.d). Teacher librarians are in a unique position – we are teachers (as well as librarians). My last two questions are: is this unique position really an advantage? If so how best to take advantage of this unique position?

Cooper, M. (1988). Whose culture is it, anyway? In A. Lieberman (Ed.), Building a professional culture in schools (pp. 45-54). New York: Teachers College Press.

Horton, R. (n.d.). Teacher librarians: What are we? What should we be? Professional development from the inside. In Alia. Retrieved August 7, 2008, from http://alia.org.au/~rhorton/education/role.html

Joyce, B. (2004, September). How are professional learning communities created? History has a few messages. Phi Delta Kappan, 76-83. Retrieved July 25, 2008, from Academic Search Premier database.

Little, J. W. (1990). The persistence of privacy: Autonomy and initiative in teachers’ professional relations. Teacher College Record, 91(4), 509-536. Retrieved August 7, 2008, from Blackwell Synergy database.