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Brendan Murphy

SEDL - School Context: Bridge or Barrier to Change - 0 views

  • Discipline is the overwhelming obstacle to school success.
    • Brendan Murphy
       
      This is so true especially in low SES schols.
  • Educational bureaucracy obstructs
  • According to Gault and Murphy (1987), many American schools claim to practice cultural pluralism, but in reality all students are expected to fit into the white middle class culture. Students with different cultural backgrounds, values, and skills than those generally valued by American schools may be perceived as incapable of performing according to the school's standards.
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  • Minorities don't care about education. (p. 39)
    • Brendan Murphy
       
      Ruby Payne would say they don't believe it helps.
  • Welch (1989) reports that teachers assess advantages and disadvantages of collaborative consultation primarily in terms of how implementation will impact them personally, rather than how it might impact student growth
  • For [many students] the main benefit of the school is the opportunity it provides to interact with close friends on a daily basis" (p. 181
  • Students will participate, according to Fullan, if they understand, have the necessary skills, and are motivated to try what is expected.
  • With teachers unable to explain why they were adopting this innovation, concern increased and parents put an end to the innovation.
  • in situations where the school board and the district are actively working together, substantial improvements can be achieved,
  • Cynicism and apathy may reflect negative experiences and produce teachers who are unwilling to proceed regardless of the content or quality of the program (Corbett, Dawson, & Firestone, 1984; Fullan, 1991).
  • Cuban (1988) states that most reforms fail because of flawed implementation.
  • Lasting fundamental change (e.g. changes in teaching practices or the decision making structure) requires understanding and, often, altering the school's culture; cultural change is a slow process.
  • culture becomes the cohesion that bonds the school together
  • culture can also be oppressive and discriminatory
  • attitudes and beliefs of those in the school create mental models
  • system paranoia exists
  • Those new to the organization must learn the culture or suffer consequences, such as the feeling of alienation.
    • Brendan Murphy
       
      though if you can suffer through that feeling of alienation you can have the opportunity to make positive changes.
  • high expectations for itself
  • successful programs do not suppress criticism
  • a school can make significant gains, in spite of faculty weaknesses, through sound staff development. Schools, however, commonly fail to have a norm regarding the need for in-service work during implementation (Fullan, 1991)
  • sharing a common vision increases the likelihood that school improvement efforts will succeed (Beer, Eisenstat, & Spector, 1990; Deal, 1985; Carlson, 1987; Miles & Louis, 1990; Norris & Reigeluth, 1991; Schlechty & Cole, 1991).
  • A cultural norm supporting the involvement of teachers in decisions or plans that will affect them heightens the possibility that changes will be appropriate in a particular setting.
  • Not only teachers, but students as well need to internalize the norms of the school improvement culture.
  • These norms encourage criticism in order to highlight areas that need improvement.
  • Students are rarely informed regarding plans in spite of the fact that the plans cannot be carried out successfully when students are not committed to cooperate with the plan, and do not know what to do or how to do it. (Fullan, 1991)
  • Negative side effects that may occur from accommodation are students' expectations that accommodations will always be made, a lack of active student engagement with the content of instruction and increased student boredom and apathy (Miller, Leinhardt, & Zigmond, 1988).
  • Parents need to be involved as co-teachers in their children's education.
Brendan Murphy

SEDL - School Context: Bridge or Barrier to Change - 0 views

  • contextual factors may influence changes aimed at improving schooling for at-risk students more than change in general.
  • "[T]rying to change any part of the system requires knowledge and understanding of how parts are interrelated" (Sarason, 1990, p. 15).
  • The need for leadership in change efforts is well documented at the school level.
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  • leadership in change efforts is well documented at the school level.
  • This method of examining change finds its roots in the cultural approach to school improvement, which suggests that "teachers and students are strongly influenced by the culture of the school, the mores, routines, and conventions about how things are done in their schools" (Deal & Peterson, 1990, p. 6).
  • at risk of failing to achieve their academic potential, dropping out of school, and/or having limits placed on their ability to function as productive adults in society.
  • the ecology, includes the inorganic elements of the school
  • The resources available, policies and rules, and size of the school are examples of this dimension of school context.
  • Culture is an expression that tries to capture the informal side of social organizations
  • Schein (1985) goes on to define culture as "the deeper level of basic assumptions and beliefs that are shared by members of an organization, that operate unconsciously, and that define in a basic `taken-for-granted' fashion an organization's view of itself and its environment" (p. 6).
  • attitudes and beliefs
  • cultural norms of the school, c
  • relationships of persons inside the school
Brendan Murphy

SEDL - School Context: Bridge or Barrier to Change - 0 views

  • There is typically no documentation of how a school got to be "effective," that is, how it instituted changes or used research findings in ways that ultimately affected children's learning (p. 3).
  • The context in which those seeking to improve schools find themselves creates a set of conditions that may present bridges or barriers to change.
  • By encouraging the development of those factors that facilitate change or nurturing them if they already exist, leaders increase the opportunity for change to become a permanent part of the school environment.
Brendan Murphy

Leadership Characteristics that Facilitate School Change: Characteristics of Leaders of... - 0 views

  • While administrators' visions tend to focus on district- or school- wide instructional issues, teachers' visions tend to address teacher roles and student outcomes
  • Teachers' vision also included school changes that would result in more participatory and decision- making roles for teachers.
  • Vision, a critical leadership characteristic, is also a trait of successful executive educators
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  • "leadership requires a vision. Without a vision to challenge followers with, there's no possibility of a principal being a leader"
  • The relationship between the teachers' and administrators' vision is important.
  • Administrators' vision tends to encompass the whole system or as described by Manasse (1986) their vision is an organizational vision. Teachers' vision appear to focus primarily on the individual or personal actions for school change
    • Brendan Murphy
       
      Kind of like vision and mission
  • vision is "based on personal or personalized professional values"
  • "visionary leadership demands a clear sense of personal and organizational values"
  • The first value Aplin identified was that the instructional programs were "the highest priority of the system and decisions were assessed as to whether they enhanced or threatened it"
  • The second value this superintendent had was "equity in person relationships and instructional decisions
  • "Practices of delegation, teaming, flexibility of process and incremental planning with extensive communication" (p. 11) was the third valu
  • "The fourth value held was the need to retain a high level of local control
  • .The fifth value disclosed was his belief that the quality of decision is improved if there has been free and honest disclosure among interested parties"
  • "the specific value that each superintendent seemed to exemplify was simply 'the children come first'"
  • This loyalty includes a keen understanding of the community's values as well as consistent participation in community activities.
  • while there was little difference between the activities of effective and ineffective principals, the meanings they attributed to their activities were significantly different.
  • They found that personal background factors, such as type of education, and organizational factors, such as school size, were more important than values.
  • "Principals in the high-SES effective schools expected an academic emphasis and task orientations in classrooms but encouraged teachers to implement a broad curriculum. Their counterparts in the low-SES effective schools implemented a more narrowly defined curriculum and allocated more time for basic skill instruction"
  • "The primary rewards for most teachers come from students' academic accomplishments -- from feeling certain about their own capacity to affect student development"
  • Hallinger and Murphy (1986) reported that even when the low wealth schools were achieving, teachers' expectations were lower than those for students at wealthier schools; they believed they had minimal parental support and therefore assigned less homework and stressed the basic curriculum.
  • Differences in curricular and instructional practices suggest that the manner in which staff implement curriculum and instruction is filtered through their perceptions, beliefs and expectations concerning student ability and community background
  • Effective superintendents believe that students come first; effective principals believe in meeting the instructional needs of the students. Teachers value working with students and believe that they have an impact on their achievement. They have the shared belief that students' learning is of primary importance. The literature revealed that these individuals' also shared a common value. They valued the human resources -- the contributions, talents, and efforts -- of others in their organization.
Brendan Murphy

SEDL - School Context: Bridge or Barrier to Change - 0 views

  • Those seeking lasting school improvement must face the fact that effective change takes time and resources.
  • Funding is also important because underfunding a project may result in the inability to address problems until the next fiscal year (Pink, 1990
  • Allowing the time needed for new programs to demonstrate results is often overlooked as a bridge to school improvement. Slavin (1989) points out:
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  • the cellular organization of schools keeps teachers physically apart from other professionals in the school. This isolation then impacts teacher attitudes and limits the relationships between teachers, students, administrators, and the community -- relationships that are essential factors in the change process.
  • Structures in the school that contribute to teacher isolation and the feeling that the individual cannot make a difference are indeed barriers to school improvement efforts.
  • Secondary students, in particular, must cope with a structure with which no worker in the real world would be saddled (Shanker, 1989). Shanker (1989) describes some of these conditions: They're put into a room to work with 30 or more of their peers, with whom they cannot communicate. The teacher gives them their tasks, and, when the bell rings 40 or so minutes later, they have to gather up their belongings and head to another "work station" for a whole new set of tasks with a new "supervisor" who has a different personality and, very likely, a different method of operation. This routine is repeated six or seven times a day�All youngsters are expected to have sufficient motivation and self-discipline to get down to serious work on day one in anticipation of a "reward" far down the road -- something most adults need all their fortitude to accomplish. (p. 3)
  • Spady (1988) believes that the organization of schools around the calendar, the clock and the schedule, exerts a pervasive influence on the thinking of those who work and study in them. This focus on time, along with the legal mandate to keep students in the custody of the school for fixed periods of time, may result in teachers adopting the unproductive syndromes of "putting in time" and "covering material" (Spady, 1988).
  • In a 1987 study, Pittman and Haughwout estimate that the
  • dropout rate at a school increases one percent for every 400-student increase in the high school population.
  • benefits to the curriculum gained by size of enrollment peaked at 400 students
  • In large schools a breakdown occurs in communication, feedback about performance, and staff involvement in decision making (Hallinger, Bickman, & Davis, 1990).
  • According to Fullan (1991), the working conditions of teachers in the vast majority of schools are not conducive to sustained teacher innovation
  • To improve teacher performance, the work environment must enhance teachers' sense of professionalism and decrease their career dissatisfaction.
  • Sarason (1982) reports that the untested assumption that few others think the same way keeps school staff from expressing ideas for improving the school.
  • This vast array of regulations runs counter to the findings of Chubb and Moe (1990), who found that schools with a greater percentage of academically achieving students have "substantial school autonomy from direct external control" (p. 183)
  • Basic education policy should be shaped at state and district levels, but the day-to-day decision-making should shift to the local school, according to a report of the Carnegie Foundation (1988). This report concludes that what is needed is school-based authority with accountability at the school level.
Brendan Murphy

Administrator as a Change Leader: Assumptions about Change - 0 views

  • Assume that changing the culture of institutions is the real agenda, not implementing single innovations (Fullan, 1991, pp. 105-107).
Brendan Murphy

Confusing Technology Integration with Instructional Reform « Larry Cuban on S... - 0 views

  • Many teachers and principals have said repeatedly to the point of the words being cliched: “integrating technology is not about technology, it is about learning.” Yet those who buy and deploy new technologies continue to seek “educational uses”  for the electronic devices.
    • Brendan Murphy
       
      Buy the technology you need not educational technology
  • The instructional focus shifts from being teacher-centered to being learner-centered…. Traditional verbal activities are gradually replaced by authentic hands-on-inquiry related to a problem….”
  • Why, she asks, should K-12 teachers’ roles change to integrate technology effectively?
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  • These two reasons, technocentrism and pedagogical dogmatism, Harris argues, explain why for decades, enthusiastic policymakers, researchers, and practitioners have confused technology integration (involving  the perennial conflict of content vs. skills) with technology as an instrument for pedagogical reform (moving from teacher-centered to learner-centered instruction).
  • Since most technology designers do not understand effective teaching (or are not designing something for teaching purposes), they often focus on making content more appealing or easier to access instead of creating a technology that causes students to more deeply engage mentally with content.
  • When I did my doctoral research, I found that just bringing in technology and showing teachers how it worked did not change pedagogy. I believe that if you want to change pedagogy to a more constructivist approach, you need to tackle this head on and not make it part of some technology project.
Brendan Murphy

LEADERSHIP FOR THE 21st CENTURY: BREAKING THE BONDS OF DEPENDENCY - 1 views

  • there is no external answer that will substitute for the complex work of changing one's own situation.
  • It is one thing to say in most successful organizations members share a clear, common vision, which is true, but quite another to suggest that this stems primarily from direct vision-building, which is not. Vision-building is the result of a whole range of activities (pp. 208-209).
    • Brendan Murphy
       
      So the vision doesn't create a sense of team rather when you build a team a vision is created.
  • critical consumers
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  • 1.Respect those you want to silence. 2.Move toward the danger in forming new alliances. 3.Manage emotionally as well as rationally. 4.Fight for lost causes.
    • Brendan Murphy
       
      Are these the four guidelines they were talking about in the introduction paragraph?
    • Brendan Murphy
       
      1. I think a strong leader is not afraid to listen to those who disagree with them. I think the strongest leader listens carefully and includes the best ideas. I don't think majority rule is always the best way to run things, I think going with what the group thinks is best but tempered by vocal minorities is the best way to run a group. It is certainly better than a dictatorship, even when the dictator is the smartest and most benevolant person in the room. 2. Akin to the first guideline forming alliances with people you want to stay away from is important. They will not work to sabotage your plans if they feel their feelings are being listened to and heard. People don't think they know everything, but they do think they should be heard. If a leader is one who is known for being able to work with new groups then I think new groups will be more willing to accept an offer or collaboration. 3. We cannot inspire people without a bit of passion. While some paths may seem like the most prudent financially, or whatever, in the end the only path that will work is the one that people support. Sometimes we have to be willing to break away from what we think is the best path in order to be successful on the most loved path. 4. Everyone loves an underdog. At least we do in this time and this place. Lost causes in education are usually the causes that will bring about the most dramatic change. I think most people see schools as getting the short end of the stick in most political arenas, thus we are one big lost cause.
  • create opportunities for learning from dissonance
  • high priority on reculturing
    • Brendan Murphy
       
      Hiring and or converting existing staff to work towards a common goal
  • Articulating and discussing hope
Brendan Murphy

Study: Leadership in school admins plays huge role in performance | Minnesota Public Ra... - 0 views

  • the people leading schools are more likely to affect student outcomes than other factors like poverty or geography.
  • schools shouldn't change principals just for the sake of change -- because turnover in leadership also hampers achievement.
Brendan Murphy

Margaret J. Wheatley: Goodbye, Command and Control - 0 views

  • We sought prediction and control, and also charged leaders with providing everything that was absent from the machine: vision, inspiration, intelligence, and courage
  • productivity gains in truly self-managed work environments are at minimum thirty-five percent higher than in traditionally managed organizations
  • There is both a need to have more autonomy in one’s work, and strong evidence that such participation leads to the effectiveness and productivity we crave.
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  • We never effectively control people with these systems, but we certainly stop a lot of good work from getting done.
  • creating systems of relationships where all members of the system benefit from their connections.
  • People organize together to accomplish more, not less
  • Whenever we look at organizations as machines and deny the great self-organizing capacity in our midst, we, as leaders, attempt to change these systems from the outside in
  • Most of us know that as people drive to work they're wondering how they can get something done for the organization despite the organization
  • They are tinkering in their local environments, based on their intimate experience with conditions there and their tinkering shows up as effective innovation
  • solutions cannot be imposed; they have to remain local.
  • If people are clear about the purpose and true values of their organization, their individual tinkering will result in system wide coherence.
    • Brendan Murphy
       
      This is why we have to develop a clear and shared vision.
  • Clarity about who we are as a group creates freedom for individual contributions.
  • If conformity is the goal, it will kill local initiative.
  • People develop new levels of trust for one another that show up as more cooperation and more forgiveness
  • But you can't direct people into perfection; you can only engage them enough so that they want to do perfect work.
  • They need information, access to one another, resources, trust, and follow-through
  • Ultimately, we have to rely not on the procedure manuals, but on people’s brains and their commitment to doing the right thing.
  • the higher you are in the organization, the more change is required of you personally
  • Commitment and loyalty are essential in human relationships. So how can we pretend we don't need them at work?
  • Employability in lieu of mutual commitment is a cop-out.
Brendan Murphy

The CBAM: A Model of the People Development Process - 1 views

  • coping strategies which are often poor practice will be adopted.
  • learning has always had to compete (usually unsuccessfully) with the time for work and ìproductivityî.
Brendan Murphy

The Case Against "Tougher Standards" - 0 views

  • But the current demand for Tougher Standards carries with it a bundle of assumptions about the proper role of schools
  • 1959, John Holt wrote that the main effect "of the drive for so-called higher standards in schools is that the children are too busy to think."
  • frankly, there never was a time when it worked all that well
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  • Accountability" usually turns out to be a code for tighter control over what happens in classrooms by people who are not in classroom
  • Rather than scrambling to comply with its provisions, our obligation is to figure out how best to resist.
Brendan Murphy

Expert Project Management - Can A Project Manager be a Servant Leader? A Reflective Cri... - 1 views

  • verbal and non-verbal signals
    • Brendan Murphy
       
      Those cues that we can't see through email and im etc....
  • people
    • Brendan Murphy
       
      Everyone is a person and has value. Similar to listening to those you wnat to silence or forming alliances with danger
  • make whole
    • Brendan Murphy
       
      Something I would expect from the Dali Lama. when things are not working perhaps there is discord in the universe.
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  • disturber and an awakener.
  • integrated, holistic position
    • Brendan Murphy
       
      Everything is connected, but you don't see that until you are woken from your slumber and can see the world for what it truely is.
  • persuasion
    • Brendan Murphy
       
      Here we go with the persuasion again.
  • think beyond
    • Brendan Murphy
       
      Kind of like seeing the big picture. or systems thinking.
    • Brendan Murphy
       
      Ok this is just the systems thinking. how everything works together
  • consequence of a decision
    • Brendan Murphy
       
      This is thinking about renewal in the future.
  • commitment to serving
    • Brendan Murphy
       
      When you make the commitment you start building trust, when you have trust then the constitutents start to take on their own leadership role, not because you asked them, but because they want to for the good of the organization.
  • committed to the growth
    • Brendan Murphy
       
      Like the learning organizations from the first reading this week. Jossey-Bass chapter 1
  • interest in the ideas and suggestions
    • Brendan Murphy
       
      Listening to people has been a theme from GARdner
  • building community
    • Brendan Murphy
       
      The theme of all the leadership so far has been you do not get your authority from fiat, but rather you earn it or it is given to you by those you lead.
  • high trust level among employees gives an organization an agility
    • Brendan Murphy
       
      Schools definately need the agility to change with the students needs.
Brendan Murphy

New schools chief Brizard largely likable but often not liked - Chicago Sun-Times - 0 views

  • “put children first”
    • Brendan Murphy
       
      A lot of people say they put children first, but where is the proof?
  • As a former New York City high school teacher and principal he carries the in-the-trenches experience
    • Brendan Murphy
       
      This is a nice change
  • in-school suspension
    • Brendan Murphy
       
      This is better than out of school suspensions. Is there a third alternative?
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  • principals more accountable
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