Barry Smith's SQH Journey

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The title of the blog today is inspired by a comment/question that I've recently heard a few times in conversations about blogging. I know other people have talked about this in various blogs but until recently I hadn't really had much cause to consider the question, 'who are the blogs actually for?', because for me the anwer has been very clear from the start; my blog is for my own reflection and learning and if someone takes something from it in whatever guise then great, it has had a positive effect on someone eles, a win/win situation if ever there was one.

During conversations I've had with colleagues, the idea that blogging is for some a sort of 'self gratification' or 'massaging of the ego', has been mooted. My initial thoughts as a (relatively new) blogger were to defend my own position and that of others. Thankfully I've managed to hold my tongue and let the comments pass. But the words have stayed with me and made me think about what purpose blogging serves.

I suppose for me blogging is a very functional thing, it serves a purpose and so far has fulfilled that purpose very well, to allow me to document and reflect upon the stages gone through and issues arising during the course of my SQH. Even if it was purely for self gratification I don't think there would be any problem in it from the point of view that nobody is forced to read it, I'm not doing it 'on company time', and I'm pretty sure I'm not offending anyone!

Where blogging's enormous value and usefulness arises is in the interaction that others have with what has been written. I can truly say that I had not used the internet for meaningful learning until I started blogging. I have learned in a superficial way by gaining new facts and such like, but not in a reflective, deep sense. That may say more about me than the usefulness of the internet(!) but in the past few months I have used my own blog, and those of others to reflect upon my own educational values and views of learning. I have taken information from other blogs and used it to inform my own viewpoints both in agreeing and disagreeing with what has been said, and I have used and shared resources with others.

I'm definitely an advocate of blogging, not as an end in itself, but as another tool that we can use to further our own learning and the learning of others. But as with anything new there will be suspicion and distrust in some quarters until real benefit can actually be 'seen'. If anyone reads this who is not a blogger, I'd say start your own educational blog and see where it takes you, only then can you truly guage its usefullness and you can also have an opinion based on a practical understanding of the processes involved.

I was fortunate enough to attend a meeting chaired by Sandy Paton of Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce today, to discuss work experience for S5/6 youngsters in businesses who employ Maths and Science graduates. The idea is to give prospective University students a 'taste' of the types of companies and jobs that they could potentially be employed by on leaving University having gained a degree in Maths or Sciences. This will, it is hoped, in turn have the knock on effect of encouraging more youngsters to follow a Science or Maths course at University.

The businesses involved obviously have a vested interest in turning out many high calibre Maths and Science graduates to fill vacancies that they project they will have in the next 5 to ten years, but I have to say that I'm delighted that successful businesses (Oracle were represented today and already working with 40 Scottish educational institutions) are beginning to work with schools and colleges in partnership to provide meaningful opportunities and experiences for our young people.

I think educators inevitably feel a note of caution when business plays the 'Corporate Social Responsibility card', but the reality that we are living is that opportnities for providing such high quality experiences for youngsters in 'higher end' businesses are limited at present and they are, in my view, an untapped resource. I am looking forward to seeing where the pilot scheme leads.

The thought also struck me today that the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce may be an excellent place to find a host organisation for my SQH comparitive study. I will be following that lead up with vigour too!

Tomorrow the school are having a 5km walk around Prestonpans that every youngster in the school will be involved in. It is a real community event with students, teachers, parents, the local Rotary, the Police and others involved. It has been organised with military precision by our HE department and they deserve enormous praise for their efforts, not least for getting us all off classes for the day!

After that it's out for a meal with colleagues, a couple of ginger beer and limes and then October holidays and SQH mania start in earnest.

We made further progress towards getting ideas and input for the Alternative Curriculum today. I had an encouraging conversation with Stevie Siegerson of the Columba 1400 project and despite them not, at the moment, working directly with youngsters of the age of our S3 students, he was upbeat about the prospects of putting something together in the near future that would be suitable. I would love to get the youngsters involved with an organisation like Columba 1400, which aims not only to bring out the confidence and positive aspects of each youngster's personality, but also develop leadership skills. What a potentially wonderful opportunity.

I also had contact through another colleague, from Sally Harris who co-ordinates the Active Steps outdoor activities project. Sally is keen to find out more about our Alternative Curriculum and hopefully have some input to the programme. Things are definitely looking up.

Further good news is that I have almost finalised my working party to look into the structure and content of the Alternative Curriculum. I've had a great response from interested members of staff in the school, as well as having representation from outside agencies. One thing I'm struggling with is deciding on pupil consultation and parental consultation and involvement at the planning stages. I've 'up-skilled' myself enough to be able to set up my own 'wiki' to allow anyone to have their say in the design of the programme and will be putting it together in the next week, therefore potentially giving parents and pupils a chance to contribute. But my gut feeling is that I really need to have representation from parents and pupils in the working group, otherwise how can it be truly representative? That's one I'll have to sort out this week.

I'm delighted to say that I have also passed SQH Unit 1, I found out on Thursday. What a massive relief! That has given me renewed energy and motivation, really a great boost.

I've been reading Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences - New Horizons, an update of the original 1993 version. If you haven't read it and are interested in the way that we, as a species, learn and also the way we recognise 'intelligence', then I would throroughly recommend it. It throws up many interesting questions about how we recognise and value different kinds of achievement and different 'intelligences'. I just wish I had read it in 1993!

Have just finished two incredibly inspirational SQH taught days at Moray House. The focus was our Unit 3 Comparative Study(CS). We have to take some facet of leadership and management and compare our school situation with that of another organisation, either a business, public body, school from a different sector or not-for-profit organisation. The aim being to highlight similarities and differences and see what we can learn from one another.

We had the privilege of listening to Joan Stead, senior research fellow at Moray House who gave us a fascinating insight into the 'messy' world of qualitative research. Whereas quantitative research by its nature is generally easily measured, recorded and analysed, the world of qualitative research is a whole lot more 'organic', messy and less easily 'boxed', therefore tending generate data on a much smaller scale. Joan described having to battle against the mindset which dictates that anything which is not easily measured and cannot generate a large amount of data is not valid in the world of research. We have to ask what inference can we draw from the subtle nuances of semi-structured and unstructured interviews, as opposed to vast amounts of numerical data where the set of responses is known before the outset?

A quote Joan used that I think I'm going comandeer is, "Say a lot about a little rather than a little about a lot", a great way to describe being focussed and aiming your sights on a smaller target rather than using a 'scattergun' approach.

We had a fantastic input from Derek Walker, a director of The Tree of Knowledge, who described the benefits to business of becoming involved in an SQH comparitor study and also gave some extremely useful tips on 'selling' your research idea to a prospective partner. Derek was both animated and realistic in his description of the potential PR gains for businesses of becoming involved in an Education-Business partership as well as the possibility of a reciprocal study being set up in the future and how that may strengthen links between business and schools. It throws up many interesting questions.

The Value Creation Process is a kind of SWOT analysis which outlines Dangers, Opportunities, Credentials,Plan and Path and the Evolution of an idea, in this case a partnership, which the Tree of Knowledge and other businesses use widely. Derek encouraged us to open up a dialogue with our prospective CS partner about the dangers they saw in having an outsider come and do research in their organisation. In this way we could then go back with the opportunities or solutions to those dangers, thus removing the barriers to the collaboration taking place. I have taken note and will go to my potential CS partner armed and ready!

I am trying to reduce the scope of my initial idea, which was to compare change management in my school with a technologies business, such as a mobile phone company who, by their very nature, must continually change if they are to keep up with the technology that drives the business.

How is the management of change embedded in their processes and in the mindset of employees? How can teachers suffer from 'change/initiative fatigue' and other professions cope well? Is it a cultural, process or management issue or a combination of them all? These questions are far too big for my purposes so hopefully I can strip them down to something manageable. So many ideas so little time!

I sit tonight feeling somewhat bewildered at the task facing me. I am attempting to analyse the school's capacity for change and improvement usisng Barbara MacGilchrist's 'Nine Intelligences' model. I have to submit a section of this analysis along with the school improvement project rationale and plan in draft form on Thursday. I'm having real difficulty understanding the task fully so I think some input from my tutor will be required. At this rate it will be a flimsy draft.

I presented the current state of play of the alternative curriculum at our joint Pastoral/Learning Support Team meeting today. One of the striking features of bringing the information together was the large drop in numbers of young people involved in pre-vocational college education in the school. There are a number of reasons for this which I don't need to go into here, but it made me realise how things are changing in terms of the provision of vocational experiences for our youngsters and how very important it will be to find local solutions in the future. This is an important area of education for many of the young people at Preston Lodge High School and I think we will have to be creative in the future in finding appropriate opportunities for them.

I had an interesting discussion with one of our deputes today, Mike Mclaughlin, about the use of the STACS and Midyis data in secondary schools. As part of my next submission for SQH I have to analyse the school's 'capacity for change' and part of that is looking at both qualitative and quantitative data in relation to the school's current position. Mike has done some really excellent analysis on our 2006 standard grade results using the Midyis testing output from S1. An extrapolation of the Midyis results provided predictions for the numbers of grades 1&2 ,3&4 and 5&6 that the school could 'expect' according to Midyis. When we compared the predictions to the actual results taking into account various factors, the numbers of the 'predicted' and 'actual' grades were very close. Actual grades slightly higher than predicted for 1&2, 5&6 and slightly lower for grades 3&4.

The Midyis data throws up many questions in how we use it to inform classroom practise. Could it be used to motivate both students and teachers to achieve beyond the prediction or is the long term nature of the prediction just too much for youngsters to really engage with? Could it become a 'fait accomplis' if teachers see that youngsters in there subject are 'on track' for what they are predicted therefore not 'pushing' any further, could it be used to 'label' youngsters at too an early age or is it exactly what schools need to grasp and use across all subjects to inform subject choice?

I don't have any answers to these questions but it has made me really think about the pressures on senior management to continually consider the 'big picture' and the standards that schools are currently very widely judged by, examination results. And while there is pressure for attainment to be high in terms of examination results, because I think most parents still judge a school to be 'good' purely on attainment, does this leave enough room for the principles of Assessment is For Learning and a Curriculum for Excellence to be fully embedded and embraced?

Thinking about these things really makes me consider the huge amount I have yet to learn about the school as an organisation within its own individual context. I also need to consider the political pressures that schools are under to deliver according to an agenda that may be largely set by Government. They really are fascinating and important issues, both for now and for our future.

I have been thinking about what content I would like to have in my weblog and who and what it's for. I am trying to use it as a learning diary to remind myself of the processes I went through and to inform my commentary which makes up the final unit of the SQH. I also want to be as honest as I can to give others who may be interested in SQH a 'flavour' of what to expect. To that end I'll share my current feelings........ Time is a real enemy at the moment, having to get my head around all the reading invloved and understanding the process of school improvement, as well as getting a handle on the school's 'capacity for change' is a tall order on top of the rest of the day's and week's work. It is fascinating stuff and I don't begrudge doing it because it opens up a whole new understanding of schools as organisations and their place in the community. But I could do with a full week off to concentrate completely on it!

This weekend is my 'biggy', the bulk of the work for my next two taught days has to be completed. My resubmission has to be completed as well as a draft section of the school situational analysis and school improvement project and a section of my 'project plan'. I'm finding getting my head around it all really tough, but again, I suppose it has to be this way, you have to show that you are capable of working under these time constraints and pressures.

To cap it all Ruaridh, our nine month old son, has decided that tonight he is not going to go to bed, this wasn't in the manuals...

I read Edward de Bono's 'Six thinking hats' after going to the SETT conference and used the principles in one of my first year classes this week when we were discussing bullying and relationships. It was powerful stuff and really added a lot to my lesson. A very simple and yet effective way of structuring your thinking and what's more, the students 'got it' wthout much explanation. It's not everyday you come across something like that. I will definitely be using the principles of 'the six thinking hats' more in the future.

Time to admit defeat and work on somebody's sleep!

I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to go to the SETT conference in Glasgow today. I heard three keynote speeches, Zoe van Zwanenberg from the Scottish Leadership foundation talking about Inspiring leadership, Terry Dozier, Teacher adviser to the Clinton administration, and Edward de Bono discussing thinking skills. I was pleased to note that many of the themes emerging from the first two speakers re-inforced much of what I have been learning through both the Standard for Headship and the SQH. I was really encouraged by this and again it makes me think that we must be 'getting it right' in Scotland in relation to developing leadership at all levels in schools.

Edward de Bono provided real food for thought with his explanation of teaching thinking skills explicitly and the effect it has had on every type of learner. From those who have difficulty 'tuning in' to the most 'switched on' brains in the country. I have heard of the 'six thinking hats' and know a little of the concept but I will certainly look into it further now. My thoughts again turn to the potential this could have as part of the enhanced curriculum programme if it really is as powerful as he claims.

The pressures of trying to juggle SQH, work, family and A LIFE came to bear this weekend. I juggled my daddy duties, as well as organising an African drumming workshop in Glasgow with my good friend and Senegalese master drummer Mockolo Sawane. By the time Sunday night came around at the end of our rehearsal my arms were hanging off....fast forward to Monday morning and trying to get my head around my re-submission for Unit 1 of the SQH, the critical self-evaluation.

After having got over the 'nose out of joint' feeling for having to re-submit a 300, which turned into around 700, word section(what a powerful lesson that was!) of my CSE I battled on to put something coherent together to match the success criteria. Five hours later I finally sent a draft to my tutor for her to look over before I finally submit. Here's hoping there's not too much more tweeking required.

No rest for the wicked as it has been straight on to preparing my SQH project and discussing my idea for an enhanced curriculum with Willie Innes, our local councillor, this afternoon. Being heavily involved with the 'Pennypit' community education centre he is keen for the school to forge stronger links with the community and vice-versa. The enhanced curriculum seems to be a perfect way to do this. As always, financial considerations and budgets may pose obstacles to getting things 'up and running' but hopefully with the strength of the project and potential benefits to the community as a whole we can find a way around and difficulties in this area. I am keen to involve our local businesses in supporting our youngsters at an early stage, to help forge links which will hopefully bring benefit to all concerned in the long run.

I also had some good news from Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce about a work visit for some of our potential Maths and Science university candidates. Tiso in Leith have very kindly agreed to give a group of a dozen or so S5 students a tour around their premises in November. This is the first of several projects we are hoping to be involved in with the Chamber of Commerce and provides another exciting opportunity for the school and our youngsters.