Developing criticalfriendshipsupportingss

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


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


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


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


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…


Mentor…


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/