An introduction to school transformation
Activities to help you explore new models of teaching, learning and schooling in collaboration with colleagues and communities.
Educator Reading Club
Reading clubs can be a helpful way of stimulating dialogue between educators about new educational approaches, challenges and opportunities. They offer a chance for educators within or across schools to interrogate new ideas and consider the implications for their students, peers, schools communities and education system.
What’s your goal or priority?
Start your club by considering what it is you would like to learn about, and with who. Are there any pressing challenges your school or system is currently facing that might need an injection of new insight? Any big opportunities that could be built upon? Any professional learning goals that a number of your colleagues share? Goals and priorities will help your reading club to not just be interesting, but genuinely professionally useful.
What book/article/paper, and what provocations?
Select a reading that matches your goals and feels relevant to your interests and context. It’s a good idea to think about the questions you’d like to find answers to upfront, and then build upon them as you read. Below you can find some suggestions plus provocations to get you started!
How should the club operate?
Choose a start date and a next meeting date where you come back together to discuss, making sure you are realistic about what you and your colleagues can achieve in any given timeframe. It might be that you allow a month for a full book, break down a large book by chapters or select articles, blogs or papers and have more frequent discussions. If you are the facilitator of the club, send reminders to members to help them stay on track.
Suggested readings
Student and family engagement
Strengthening student engagement: what do students want? By the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
The evolving nature of family-school engagement by Brookings
10 expectations that all students should have of their schools by Big Picture
Rethinking student support in schools by EdSurge
Provovation questions:
How can we tell if students or their families are engaged?
What’s the difference between engagement and compliance?
How might a teacher’s role and pedagogical choices change when promoting engagement?
How can we support a wide range of student needs?
New models of teaching and learning
A new path to the classroom: What could Registered Apprenticeship mean for teaching? By the National Council on Teacher Quality
Project-based learning examples and How do we know if we are doing PBL well? by High Tech High
Schoolwide Community Service and Volunteering in the Elementary Grades by Edutopia
More High School Students Are Taking College Classes. But Not Everyone Gets the Chance by EdSurge
Common Ground: Cultivating Collaboration Between In-School and Out-of-School Environments by Remake Learning
Provovation questions:
What benefits do external learning partnerships being to students and teachers?
What features of quality PBL make it unique and impactful?
How might we collaborate with other organisations to make learning more relevant and meaningful?
What approaches and practices can make sure each child is supported and challenged?
School leadership
Building better school leadership by ASCD
A guide to transformative leadership in education by Thought Exchange
Reconciliation in Education: what we know and where we need to go by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership
How can we prepare students for the Fourth Industrial Revolution? 5 lessons from innovative schools around the world by World Economic Forum
Provovation questions:
How might our leadership need to change to enable us to reimagine schooling and learning?
What culture do we need to be able to thrive?
How can we enable our educators to lead our school vision and mission too?
What do we need as leaders in order to move from maintaining the status quo to transforming learning?