Brian's Blog

One of the biggest challenges school leaders face is how to redesign the learning system to have the greatest effect on our students? With researchers such as John Hattie (2012) focusing his lens on the impact of the teacher on the student’s learning there is the push to have teachers identify ways that they can redesign the learning environment, redesign pedagogy and redesign assessment. How do we re-imagine the concept of school to make the teaching have the greatest effect on student learning in real and authentic ways and what will this look like? As we drill down into this question the focus is drawn further away from the upfront teaching and redirected firmly to student centred learning. Having a shared understanding of what learning looks like is essential as practitioners we can identify ways of embedding this into practice.  Learning is the essence of what happens in the classroom every day, but when we discover what good learners are and the keys to switch all le...

I was reminded yesterday as I read some of John Hattie’s work that there is no magic structure or strategy was going to do this for us. In fact some of the structures and strategies that many of us embrace the inquiry-based learning, project-based learning problem-based learning in and of themselves have a small effect if held in isolation and not embedded in a culture that is powerful. He highlights that one of the most powerful effects on improving achievement for kids and narrowing the gap was when teachers get together and share honestly what was working for them and what's not working for them. When they have the candidness to be able to talk about where the struggles are and support each other to make improvements that it had a very large effect size improving achievement for students. This community of practice empowers the quality of teaching and the enhances the practices we employ to opportune students with a willingness to produce work of esteem. I believe that ...

In an age where life seems to be becoming more and more fast-paced, I have challenged by the notion of excellence. With the amount of content educators cover many of us have compartmentalised ourselves like our subjects. We have created the discrete subjects of Maths, Literacy, Science, Humanities, Art and Physical Education and within these we have created smaller bite size pieces. I was awoken to this realization on my Blue Mile walk today that many of us have lost the ability to step back, look at the big picture and question ourselves is what I am teaching my students going to serve them in the world beyond school? When we look at the world and how industries outside of education work, a lively interplay can be observed. Within this exchange life is not broken into these smaller subsections. Employees may have job titles and specific task they do but by using an integrated approach they work together to improve, become more efficient and complete a task at a higher level. In m...

This article first appeared in the Education Technology Solutions Magazine April/May 2016 edition. A wise person once said to me “drop the program and look at the end goal, where do we want to see our students? What type of learners do we want them to become? What type of world will they be walking into as adults?” Even though these questions are big they helped to frame a discussion on digital leadership with my digital leader and Head of Junior School Andrew Coote. Digital Leadership needs to be deliberate and intentional linked to a vision or a strategy, it cannot be random and haphazard; however, this too does not mean that a particular program will be the silver bullet to cure ‘all ills’. Digital leadership empowers the use of ICT to support the creation of individualised respectful learning for each and every student. The learning is the focus and technology is the tool. To this end, pedagogy can be identified as the starting point for building any quality form of di...

Recently I was asked at a conference why was I encouraging my teachers to have a class blog and also begin professional reflective blogs. My response was something in the lines of - one of the greatest desires of parents is to get more information about how their child is doing in class. Their key questions are often: What they are learning?  What is the social climate of the classroom?  Are they really happy? It is not that class blogs can definitively answer this but they do give a snapshot. They allow parents a portal to see in on the classes learning as a whole and help them facilitate discussions at home. The second reason I have been encouraging the use of blogging is that it provides a portal for students to have learning curated. My students whenever they need to go out on the internet always go via our classes blog . Parents have commented that this is a common routine at home also. I have the key topics tap with learning resources behind these. The blog bec...