Developing Critical Friendship Supporting Study Support

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Developing Critical FriendshipSupporting Study
Support

• QiSS Critical Friend Network
• 7th November 2008
• Robinson Executive Centre
• Wyboston Lakes
• Sue Swaffield
• University of Cambridge

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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

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CARPE VITAM Leadership for Learning

• International
• Context sensitive
• Value-based
• Action learning
• Collaborative
• Critical friendship
• Practical theory

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LEARNING
LEADERSHIP
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LEARNINGActivityDispersed
AGENCY
LEADERSHIPActivityDistributed
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MORAL PURPOSE
LEARNINGActivityDispersed
AGENCY
LEADERSHIPActivityDistributed
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Five Principles for Practice

• A Focus on Learning
• Conditions for Learning
• Dialogue
• Shared Leadership
• Shared Accountability

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Moral Purpose
Moral Purpose
Moral Purpose
Conditions for learning
Focus on learning
Leadership as activity
Learning as activity
Agency
Shared leadership
Shared accountability
Dialogue
Moral Purpose
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1. Leadership for learning practice involves
maintaining a focus on learning as an activity
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A Focus on Learning

• Everyone is a learner

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Interconnected levels of learning
Student learning
Professional learning
School learning
System learning
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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

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Focus on learningand critical friends

• Different conceptions of learning
• Critical friends learning
• Keeping learning as the focus, amongst the
  busyness and urgent pressures

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2. Leadership for learning practice involves
creating conditions favourable to learning as
an activity
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Conditions for Learning

• Environment for learning
• Material and physical space
• Affective and cognitive skills and dispositions
• Cultural and structural conditions

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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

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3. Leadership for learning practice involves
creating a dialogue about leadership for
learning
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Meaning flowing throughnot Discussion
tearing to bitsDisciplined dialogue
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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

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Professionals in dialogue(Alexander, 2004)

• Listen without interruption?
• Respect others 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?

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Dialogue and critical friends

• Initiating dialogue - drawing attention to good
  practice -gt further enhancement
• Tools and routines for stimulating and enhancing
  dialogue
• Recognising the stages of developing dialogue
• Openness and willingness to engage and reframe

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4. Leadership for learning practice involves
the sharing of leadership
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Hierarchical structures formal
delegationFluid spontaneous dispersed forms
of leadership
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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
• Everyones experience and expertise drawn on
• Collaborative activity across boundaries of
  subject, role and status valued and promoted

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5. Leadership for learning practice involves a
shared sense of accountability
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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

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What insights do the Leadership for Learning
principles provide for our work as critical
friends?
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How does / cancritical friendshipcontribute
toorganisational improvement?
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• Critical friend SIP Coach
• Mentor

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• Critical friend SIP Coach
• Mentor

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• Critical friend SIP Coach
• Mentor

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Similarities differences
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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

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Critical friendshipSome 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

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References

• Alexander, 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.uk
• www.educ.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/lfl/