If schooling is to be the engine of the emerging knowledge-society and economy then, innovation has to be a central plank of schooling. The fundamental raw material of schooling is itself knowledge produced in the past, and the activity of schooling is the production of new knowledge in the form of the development of students' understandings and skills.
Education is recognised by OECD member states as a fundamental key to wealth creation and competitiveness in the current global information economy . (OECD, 1999)
The implementation and outcomes of the IBPP have substantially extended our understanding of successful school innovation. We know from school effectiveness research that schools can make a difference in student outcomes and that this has stimulated an interest in how school change could lead to an improvement in outcomes for students (Hopkins et al., 1979; Teddlie & Reynolds, 1999).
The single most important finding of research on variation in the effectiveness of schools is that, on average, the differences to effectiveness between classrooms and programmes within individual schools are much greater than the differences in effectiveness between most schools. Hence, strategies aimed at improving schools by reducing the variation in effectiveness within individual schools have much greater scope for improving the effectiveness and performance of schools than strategies that seek to address the variation between schools. The IBPP innovations sit firmly within a school improvement tradition concerned with both the processes of change and the outcomes of improvement efforts.
The IBPP was designed to support school innovation by exerting constructive pressure for schools to demonstrate their effectiveness in improving learning outcomes for students. Pressure took the form of high expectations and a finite time frame for evaluation. Support was provided through funding and other direct support for the innovations and advice about rigorous evaluation that could stand up to external scrutiny.
Among the IBPP schools there was a high level of awareness of the scope of the recent educational reform agenda. A number of the schools can be described as being at the formative end of the spectrum in influencing the reform agenda, particularly where it has focused in more recent times on learning outcomes, as opposed to structural issues. The leading-edge innovations in the IBPP focused on issues of learning and learning outcomes, supported by an interactive relationship with the research community. The schools were users of research knowledge and integrated research-based designs for improving learning. These schools were also strong contributors to the production and dissemination of new knowledge about effective practice in schools.
As noted earlier in this report, only a small number of the innovations sought to break the mould of current arrangements for schooling. Most aspired to improve school performance by incorporating understandings of best practice and research knowledge into their current structures and processes. Although this required schools to rethink well-established practices, it suggests that significant breakthroughs are unlikely given current constraints on the operation of schools. The schools that did seek to develop innovations that were `outside the box' often encountered bureaucratic constraints.
The development of strategies to adapt learning environments to the needs of individual students posed a significant challenge to schools, as it required teachers to move away from the standardised provision of traditional school environments. Other significant challenges for many schools were instituting pedagogical practices that engaged students more intensely in their learning; and changing the conventional timetable, which in some cases constrained teachers to relatively short periods with students.
Many of the schools were of the view that the rapidly developing capacity of communication systems to allow access to almost unlimited amounts of information at low cost will shift the focus of human understanding to higher- level analysis, with a focus on the interpretation of complex information. Schools were seeking to provide their students with the theoretical and conceptual frameworks plus the analytical tools that are likely to be required in this emerging world. Many of the innovations also sought to significantly transform the way they address issues of teaching and learning by recognising that "what was a discrete architectural space, a classroom, is altered spatially and temporally by the use of new information technologies" (Bigum & Green, 1993: 12).
As indicated in the previous chapter, some of the innovations were judged as being at the leading edge of developments internationally. This was most evident of the literacy and the ICT-based innovations. However, in most schools, the innovations did not have to be at the leading edge to make a significant improvement in student learning outcomes. The schools in the IBPP were not selected because they were the highest performing or most innovative schools in the nation. Rather, they were selected because they evidenced a potential to innovate and to evaluate the impact of their innovation on the improvement of learning outcomes for students.
The IBPP indicates that schools across a broad spectrum have the capacity to tackle innovations that lead to improvement in learning outcomes for students. The schools represented a wide cross-section from both government and non- government sectors across: the stages of schooling, rural and urban locations, levels of community disadvantage, religious/secular orientation, and sources of government funding ie federal or state. The findings indicate that a wide range of schools have the capacity for successful innovation, given appropriate conditions.
Pressures for schools to innovate
The impact of both constructive pressure and support as necessary components in the improvement of schools (Fullan, 1993) was evident across the IBPP schools. The research identified a number of forces both external and internal to them that influenced their propensity to engage in and sustain innovative
development projects. The external pressures included significant changes in the broader social and economic environment and specific developments in the educational environment of schooling (Boston, 1997; Holden, 2001). The IBPP schools were aware of these pressures through resulting developments in educational policy, market forces and professional discourse about school innovation. In addition, professional pressures within the IBPP schools were a significant factor in their innovations.
External pressure from the increasing relevance and use of ICT in the broader social and economic environment was a clear factor in many of the ICT-based innovations. Schools sought to take advantage of the first major opportunity that was available for the widespread integration of ICT into learning environments.
Likewise, the enhanced public discussion of literacy standards over the last decade was a significant factor in many of the innovations. All states and territories now participate in national benchmarking of student literacy outcomes and information about the literacy standards of students in the primary years is now available to the public. Research developments in the teaching of literacy have shown that particular strategies can have a significant impact on improving outcomes for students, thus putting pressure on schools to adopt such strategies.
A number of national and state-based projects over the last decade have sought to address the recognised problems of student engagement and learning in the middle-years. About one-third of the IBPP innovations sought to address problems of student learning and disengagement in the middle-years of schooling.
Over the last two decades, there has been a shift in the focus of governments to emphasise policy and regulation of schools, and a reduction in the direct role of government in the management of schools. This has been brought about by higher levels of devolution of authority to schools, resulting in the emergence of self-managing government schools and the growth in the provision of services to schools from outside of government; and enhanced regulatory systems of accountability for student learning outcomes (Angus, 1998; Caldwell, 1998, 2001; Caldwell & Hayward, 1998).
Although these external policy developments were critical to the innovations in many schools, powerful professional internal pressures for improvement were equally critical. In most cases, the external and internal pressures were jointly responsible for the innovations. The external pressures created the environment and signals for innovation and internal pressures, derived mainly from the substantial insights and professional experience of teachers, led schools to seek better ways of meeting the needs of their students.
One-sixth of the schools indicated that their innovation was driven by `market' signals that indicated a potential crisis or threat to their future or a perceived need to position themselves better in the marketplace. Such schools saw innovation as a major strategy for securing their future. The innovations in these schools mostly focused on complex and deep-seated changes in school practice, rather than superficial public relations exercises that could otherwise be the response to market pressures manifest through processes such as more active parent choice among schools (Cuttance & Stokes, 2000). In the non-government sector, a decline in the school's market position can crystallise relatively quickly into a fundamental question of economic survival for a school. With more active parent choice operating across all sectors, the pressures of declining demand for the services of individual schools can also have similar effects in the government sector, although this may be played out in a delayed timeframe.
The pressures on schools to develop innovations and improvement strategies are complex. Some pressures reinforce one another while others combine to provide mixed signals to schools. Increasingly, schools are operating in an environment that is subject to pressures from four sources: public and professional discourse, the framework of educational policy, the regulatory environment, and market forces. The IBPP research focused on schools that were generally successful in their innovative responses to such pressures. The relevance of the findings from the IBPP schools is limited for other schools that, for a range of reasons, are unable to respond effectively to such pressures for improvement.
Constraints on school innovation
The formal regulatory frameworks for schooling are those that regulate personnel, financial management, curriculum, and assessment. Regulatory frameworks consist of both formal regulations and informal and tacit understandings (Angus, 1998). The activities of schools are kept in line by formal and informal sanctions related to such regulatory frameworks.
The increased focus of accountability on learning outcomes for students has been paralleled by a move away from strong regulation of the educational inputs to schooling. There has been a simultaneous tightening of regulatory frameworks in relation to accountability for learning outcomes (performance accountability) and a weakening of regulations circumscribing inputs, processes and the practice of schooling (administrative accountability).
The impact of this shift in accountability was evident in the focus of the IBPP innovations. Schools felt able to innovate outside of the formal regulatory structures without fear of any reprisals where the direct accountability mechanisms were weaker. This was particularly the case with schools that moved outside the formal specification of the curriculum to develop an alternative focus for learning. For example, schools were able to innovate by developing a curriculum that emphasised the development of students' capacity and skills in cognitive analysis and meta-cognitive knowledge and self-regulation of learning (which many schools refer to as `thinking skills'). Such curricula also aimed to enhance students' abilities to communicate ideas and information, to plan and organise activities and to collaborate with others. Such developments were feasible because there is weak regulatory monitoring of the implementation of systemic curriculum frameworks. By contrast, there was little evidence of innovation in the final two years of schooling, other than in the integration of ICT. The Year 11-12 curriculum and public examination structures directly and formally regulate both the curriculum and learning outcomes of schools.
Almost one-fifth of the schools had to overcome bureaucratic constraints to their innovations. Some maintained a low profile for their innovation so as not to induce the imposition of constrains from external agencies. A small number of schools sought, and were granted, relief from formal regulatory constraints. There was evidence of innovation in the deployment of resources where school systems had substantially enhanced the degree of self-management that schools could exercise and shifted their focus from administrative accountability to performance accountability.
Markets constitute a part, albeit a relatively small part, of the rules and regulatory framework for schools (Angus, 1998). The appropriate role for the market in schooling is dependent on matters of regulatory and policy design. Hence, there is a need to consider the impact of policy and regulatory frameworks on the capacity of schools to respond to market signals.
Policy support for innovation
The Common and Agreed Goals for Schooling in Australia (The National Goals for Schooling [1989]) a decade ago provided a framework for the development of many of the key policies that have been the focus of recent policies and reforms. The National Goals for Schooling (1989) focus significantly on education as it relates to literacy and numeracy skills and knowledge, and social competencies. Although they have recently been revised, they will need to be extended to address the new educational capacities that will be required by the young people who become the `knowledge-workers' of tomorrow. The challenge of the next two decades is encapsulated in the National Goals for Schooling in the Twenty-First Century (The National Goals for Schooling [1999]) as the development of skills and knowledge for lifelong learning (MCEETYA, 1999). However, the specific skills and knowledge required by `knowledge-workers' of the future are largely left unspecified.
An important feature of the IBPP was the emergence of a `thinking skills' curriculum in the middle-years. In these cases, schools were clearly moving beyond the established curriculum to explore more appropriate ways to provide learning opportunities for young people who were in the final stages of acquiring the capacities to be self-regulating learners. In essence, these IBPP schools were responding to the needs of their students by seeking to address the "gap between `official' school knowledge and...real-world knowledge" (Hargreaves, 1999: 20). The challenge for policy is to address the issue of how the curriculum can:
...create a sense of community and common values in a context where knowledge cannot be restricted in any way and where individual control [of access to knowledge] is much more powerful than that which might be exerted by an external agency . (Hargreaves, 1999: 20)
As indicated earlier, the major focus of change in policy in Australian schooling over the last decade in the government sector has been in policies that have simultaneously led to the emergence of self-managing schools and enhanced forms of performance accountability. This is consonant with the shift in the role of governments to a greater focus on policy and regulation accompanied by devolution of management and decision making to schools (Boston, 1997; Osborn & Gaebler, 1992). There is significant variation across the nation in the extent of devolution to schools, but all government education systems have moved in that direction and the Commonwealth Government has enhanced this aspect of the funding and accountability regime for non-government schools.
The fact that significant devolution has taken place in some states and a quarter of the schools were tackling issues of literacy suggests that the focus of policy over the last five years has at least created a climate conducive to innovation. A quarter of the schools referred to systemic policies and programmes of support as contributors to their innovation and up to half of the innovations were in the areas of literacy and ICT, two of the foci of recent policy and programmes of support for schools. The largest proportion of the innovations sought to tackle issues that schools face in the middle-years. This is an area that has been subject to a number of inquiries in Australia and significant research and development outside of Australia, but which has not been a major subject of policy until very recently, and then only in one or two systems.
The ICT-based innovations, which were the focus of one-fifth of the schools, indicated a link between specific funding policies and innovation. In this case, significant infrastructure development has been undertaken in government systems and funding has been allocated to government schools, but the innovations themselves were almost entirely school-initiated in both government and non-government schools. As a major systemic initiative, the Navigator School programme in Victoria was an exception in this context, and it was clear from the scope of the innovations in the Navigator Schools participating in the IBPP that they were at the leading-edge in Australia and internationally.
The contrast between the environment for innovations in literacy and ICT on the one hand and in mathematics and science on the other was most stark. In both the latter cases, there were few innovations and those that did exist were generally of much reduced scope and, consequently, had less impact on student outcomes than the literacy and ICT innovations which were supported by strong policies and high priority programme support.
Self-management and the flexible use of resources
There has been a wide-ranging debate about ways of enhancing the systemic effectiveness and productivity of schooling. Central to this debate have been two dimensions of the organisation of schooling, particularly in government systems. The two central and interlinked dimensions are those of self-management of schools, and flexibility for schools to undertake their fundamental business of teaching and learning. Both dimensions relate to the way in which resources are allocated and used in school systems, of which the key resource is teachers, subject to the constraints imposed by regulatory frameworks.
The arguments for greater levels of self-management being devolved to the school-level have centred on the capacity of such an approach to enable other forms of flexibility. For example, schools in some systems, and non-systemic schools, have a high level of flexibility in selecting and appointing staff to meet their specific programme needs, whereas those in other systems are still largely subject to central allocation of staff to schools. The impact of the latter is that it constrains the capacity of schools to align the experience and skills of individual teachers to the programme needs of individual schools. Non-government schools, in general, tend not to be subject to central direction over their budgets, and hence have a greater degree of flexibility in the way they manage the pursuit of their teaching and learning goals.
In centralised systems, the relevant concept is rather one of `limits' in which action and practice are closely bounded by rules and regulations. The amount of flexibility that schools can exercise is a direct function of the breadth of actions that are allowed by regulation and the extent to which certain regulations prescribe the specific actions and rules that must be followed. In practice, there is weak enforcement of many regulations in the school system, which means that the flexibility is greater than that formally sanctioned by regulation.
The simultaneous emergence of stronger performance accountability and weaker administrative accountability has influenced the exercise of flexibility. Flexibility in the allocation and utilisation of resources does not become relevant until innovation and improvement become key drivers of schooling. Flexibility was used by IBPP schools within a disciplined and strategic framework for school improvement and as future-orientated responses to their perceived challenges. The IBPP schools did not so much see themselves as restructuring time, space, roles and relationships, as changing their practices and organisational arrangements to achieve specific educational outcomes for students. The innovations were much more student- focused and instructionally-driven then the restructuring efforts of the early 1990's and the teacher-focused innovations of the 1970's.
The emerging need for schools to develop the capacity to utilise data and evidence to drive improvement is a consequence of increased levels of self- management. Because schools now have to make decisions about how best to use their resources, rather than have those decisions made elsewhere for them, they are finding it necessary to develop the capacity to make well-informed decisions that are vital to the maintenance of their `competitiveness' in the market for students.
The emergence of greater flexibility in the use of resources for government schools is likely to increase the degree of diversity across the school system. Non- government schools already have greater flexibility in the deployment of their resources, particularly in the recruitment, selection and appointment of their staff.
Diversity...entails the acceptance of innovation at school level but central control is weaker. Monolithic systems are more easily controlled, but innovative urges at school level are more frequently stifled . (Hargreaves, 1999: 52)
Supporting school innovation
Findings of research in the USA indicate the programmes that are most successful in supporting school improvement are those that make stringent demands to adopt the programme in full and set demanding targets for student learning outcomes, backed up by high quality professional development (Kentucky Department of Education, 1997). Such programmes are rigorous and backed by strong research. The only significant set of programmes that were evident among IBPP schools that met these criteria were some of the early-years literacy programmes.
Schools that had built an evaluation design into their innovations felt that they were in greater control of their innovation. In general, the prior experience of most of the schools was that evaluation was something that had been done to them, either by an external researcher using the school as a research site, or by system authorities for accountability purposes. The increasing focus on performance accountability will require that schools develop the capacity to demonstrate their outcomes in a way that is open to public scrutiny and meets external standards.
The strong learning outcomes focus of performance accountability systems means that the evaluation capacities of schools have to extend beyond discussion and reflection on their innovations. Professional reflection and discussion is an essential component of any innovation process, but it is insufficient to provide evidence of success that is compelling to others. Data-free approaches to assessing the impact of innovations do not satisfy either accountability requirements or public scrutiny.
Most of the IBPP schools had not previously planned to undertake an evaluation of their innovation. They were implementing their innovations based on their understanding of best practice gleaned from the practice of others and from research-based literature. Schools accepted the desirability of producing hard evidence based on a rigorous evaluation process, but the requirement that schools provide evidence of the success of their innovations clearly showed up areas of underdevelopment in the capacity of schools.
Relatively few schools used systemic assessment data in evaluating their innovations. The main reason for its lack of use derived from the fact that it focuses on a specific range of outcomes at particular year levels, and hence, did not provide the data needed for many of the evaluations. For example, many schools sought to enhance students' social competencies and higher-order thinking skills, neither of which was covered by data available from current assessment schemes in use in schools.
More than 70 per cent of the schools reported that they believed that their innovation had improved learning outcomes for students, but without the external support provided by the IBPP, they would not have been able to provide evidence to support their claims. In a small number of cases, the rigorous evaluations schools were able to undertake through their participation in the IBPP indicated that the innovation was less effective than the school believed. This led to the abandonment of the innovation in a small number of cases and to substantial redesign of the innovation in others.
The IBPP schools were little different from the majority of their peers in not having the capacity to undertake a sound evaluation of the impact of their innovation for school improvement. In many cases, schools required external support to move beyond first base in defining how relevant learning outcomes could be adequately measured and the data they need to collect and analyse. Very few schools were aware that their evaluation designs would require the designation of a relevant contrast or comparison as a benchmark to judge whether the innovation was successful. Pre-service teacher training rarely provides any focus on such matters and school systems and other support structures provide few opportunities for schools to access the required skills and knowledge. Systemic programmes that support school improvement planning and review potentially provide some of the skills and knowledge required, however, such programmes rarely provide the support required to link specific innovations and resource allocations to the improvement of student learning.
Many of the methodologies that are employed by academic researchers in working with schools are not sufficiently flexible and practicable for everyday use in schools. This does not mean, however, that the methodologies that schools use should be anything less than rigorous. Schools have the luxury of being able to make on-going observations to `replicate' their evaluations through well- designed monitoring processes that are normally not practicable in research work, given the timeframes and resources available. Hence, schools can check whether the initial findings of their evaluations are upheld by a series of later assessments as their innovation matures. The evaluation methodologies that schools utilise must be sufficiently rigorous to detect whether student learning outcomes are improving, which may take some time, and to provide evidence that the school can use to fine-tune and develop the innovation further in light of experience.
The main repository of skills and knowledge of the evaluation methodologies that schools can access are universities and further education institutions. Schools in the IBPP relied substantially on external consultancy support to guide them in their analysis and interpretation of information about the effectiveness of their innovations in achieving their aims. Schools required access to external expertise also in clarifying the goals for their innovations, formulating research and evaluation questions and designing an appropriate methodology for assessing the impact of their evaluations. These areas of expertise remain substantially underdeveloped in the programmes of support and general consultancy available to schools. Data-based approaches to the evaluation of school performance need to be considerably enhanced and their scope widened if they are to be useful in addressing the needs of individual schools.
In many cases, schools found that there was a paucity of assessment instruments and rubrics and strategies available for gathering relevant evidence and information about the impact of their innovations. In most cases, such information that did exist was in the research literature, and often it was not suitable for use in the operational contexts of schools.
The literacy innovations in the IBPP provide the basis of a model in which a number of schools could collaborate with an appropriate external provider to evaluate the impact of their innovations. The literacy innovations were based on a small number of models for literacy learning and would lend themselves to a common evaluation framework. In contrast, the schools implementing innovations in the middle-years and the ICT-based innovations had less commonality across schools. What they had in common was an underlying set of learning outcomes in terms of affective development, social competencies and meta-cognitive skills and knowledge that could have been the focus of collaborative evaluation between the schools and an appropriate external provider.
The innovations that the IBPP schools implemented are no more than the tip of the iceberg of innovations in schools across the nation. The fact that a very high proportion of the IBPP schools were able to demonstrate that their innovations had led to an improvement in student learning outcomes, or in the pre-cursors to learning outcomes, is strong evidence that school-based innovation can be a significant source of change in the process of moving towards the development of a school system that can produce the skills and knowledge required by knowledge-workers. A policy framework that supports schools to develop and implement innovations, evaluate their impact on student learning outcomes and disseminate this knowledge so that it is accessible to other schools will be crucial to the capacity of schools to meet the demands that will be placed on them as we move towards a society and economy that makes better use of our intellectual capital. Leading-edge schools have a critical role to play in this process. Policies and programmes to support the role of innovation and the dissemination of best practice knowledge will become a key element of the infrastructure required by schools.
The support of school innovation also requires opportunities to access knowledge and skills about best practice and how to implement it in the context of individual schools. School systems seek to provide such support through programmes of professional development. Professional development programmes should be designed in a way that directly supports professional learning. The most significant component of any learning is the opportunity to `work' with knowledge to realise new understandings. Many programmes of professional development are designed principally to disseminate information. This, however, is no more than the preliminary to a process of professional learning. In general, the IBPP early literacy innovations developed highly effective models of professional learning. They developed an integrated support structure that incorporated:
- access to knowledge and skills;
- team-based learning environments;
- structures to support professional interaction;
- strategies for scaffolding the development of new understandings by integrating new learning with old to enhance practice; and
- strategies to assess the effectiveness of new practices developed as a result of these integrated learning and development processes.
Few professional development programmes provided for schools move past first base when judged against this model of professional learning.
There was significant variability in the quality and scope of professional learning opportunities available in different areas of innovation. For example, the early years literacy innovations that drew on a well-developed model of literacy development in the early-years were able to access strong programmes of teacher learning. However, schools undertaking ICT-based innovations indicated that although there were ample opportunities for teachers to gain simple functional skills in the use of ICT, there was very little available to assist them in developing their knowledge base about the integration of ICT into classroom learning environments.
The teacher learning contexts and processes developed by the schools provided more than the opportunity for teachers to gain knowledge and skills. It also supported the development of common understandings across the school and played an important role in motivating staff and maintaining energy and enthusiasm for the innovation. The context for this was well planned and supported opportunities for collegial and collaborative engagement in discourse about the innovation.
Schools in the government sector often have access to forums for sharing information, but their participation in the IBPP provided additional support in the form of opportunities to share with peers who were also focusing on innovation. Schools in the non-government sector, on the other hand, often have more restricted opportunities to share their experiences and innovations because of the constraining impact of sharing information with `competitors' in a specific sector of the market.
Feedback from a series of focus-group sessions towards the end of the project indicated that the level of funding provided to schools was sufficient to act as a catalyst to the development, implementation and evaluation of their innovations. This was in contrast to the impact of considerably smaller sums of funding provided to schools in initiatives such as the National Schools Project of a few years earlier. The overview evaluation of the National Schools Project indicated that schools had been unable to demonstrate significant impacts on student learning outcomes from their improvement projects. A key difference between the IBPP and the National Schools' Project was the capacity of schools to purchase targeted additional skills and knowledge from consultants.
The innovations in the IBPP schools arose from their response to a combination of both external and internal pressures. Schools were responding to emerging issues for schooling in general, issues that were major topics of professional debate, changes in policy and regulatory frameworks, and market forces. A small number of the schools considered that their options were running out and that they were approaching a crisis of existence. The innovations of these schools are important because they evidence strategies for school renewal where current performance is less than what is required.
The policy and systemic programme infrastructure needs to be designed to support innovation if the strategic intentions of school systems are be realised more successfully. Innovation in schools requires a policy and regulatory environment that actively encourages school-based initiatives. Policy and regulatory frameworks can support school innovation by enhancing the capacity of schools to allocate their resources to priority areas for improvement and reduce impediments for schools to tackle priority areas for their improvement.
It is important that policy and regulatory systems maintain a constructive level of pressure through programmes that require schools to demonstrate that their innovations are achieving improved outcomes for students. They should also target strategies that provide access to the skills required by schools to develop their innovations. Policy and regulatory frameworks need to be designed to allow schools to best respond to community needs, within a framework for schooling that is itself designed to meet projected national needs and circumstances.
Although external forces were significant drivers of innovation, the findings from the IBPP schools are not proof that all schools can respond to such pressures. Policies designed to support effective school improvement as a response to external pressures need to consider how schools that lack the internal capacity to innovate can be enabled to improve, without reducing the capacity of other schools to respond to external demands and pressures.
Self-management should be designed to provide schools with the capacity to adapt better to local needs and circumstances. Given that flexibility is the power to act, the greatest flexibility is required where action can most directly be taken to effect improvement in learning outcomes for students, that is, at the level of the classroom. The capacity of schools to develop and implement strategies that incorporate best practice and knowledge at this level needs to be a key objective of educational policy. However, the provision of flexibility at the classroom level needs to be aligned with school-level strategies for whole-school development and improvement if it is to be sustainable and have an impact for all students. A key aim of the IBPP was to provide evidence about the effectiveness of the innovations in each school. Only some of the ideas and models that were the source of input to the design of innovations had sound evidence to support them in professional experience or the research literature. In a number of cases, the IBPP was to be the proving ground for particular ideas. The innovations required significant professional energy and many schools planned that the innovation would be scaled-up over time.
As a consequence of their participation in the IBPP, a small number of schools either substantially changed their innovation or abandoned it because it was found to be less effective than the alternative programmes that were being used as a benchmark in the evaluation of the innovation. Without the formal evaluation, these schools may well have proceeded to scale-up a programme that would have led to a decline in the school's effectiveness.
This issue is particularly important in cases where schools are basing their innovations on popularised ideas and new knowledge that has an, as yet, unproven link to the improvement of learning outcomes for students. Many of the IBPP innovation strategies were based on approaches to teaching and learning that drew on recent understandings about multiple intelligences, learning styles and the cognitive functioning of the brain. These developments are of potential importance, but care needs to be taken to ensure that the innovations that are developed do in fact lead to improvements in learning for students. The way forward through innovation requires that a degree of rigour be maintained at all times in developing the practice of teaching and learning and using feedback from student learning outcomes to make judgements about the impact of innovations on the improvement of student learning outcomes.
By their nature, school-based innovations require access to a support structure that can respond flexibly to the specific needs of individual school innovations. Although there are many external providers who work with schools in a professional development capacity, only a small proportion of these have the skills and knowledge required to support schools in assessing the impact and effectiveness of their innovations. The experience of the IBPP schools indicated that very few schools had the internal capacity to undertake all aspects of the development and evaluation of their innovations. Most sought to access external expertise to support specific aspects of their innovation.
Even in school systems that have implemented a significant level of devolution, the support programmes for schools do not, in general, provide the framework for enhancing the analytical and research capacities of schools, and in `growing' the external infrastructure that schools can access to meet their needs. In the past, universities have played a significant role as external providers of support by providing access to skills through their post-graduate programmes. However, the significantly reduced focus on the types of skills that schools need, the much lower participation rate of teachers in post-graduate study, and the lack of congruence between post-graduate research methods courses-aimed at students planning post-graduate research careers-and the needs of schools have meant that provision by universities in this area has almost disappeared in recent years.
Finally, teacher learning and effective leadership at all levels within schools are crucial in the development of the capacity to meet the demands of the emerging knowledge society and economy. Effective environments for teacher learning will require considerable development beyond the training oriented environments that often pass for professional development opportunities. Professional learning requires that teachers actively engage in working with the new knowledge to reach new understandings by building on the extant knowledge that they have already acquired.
The educational leadership literature, including policy manuals of most education systems and leadership development centres, focus on positional authority, with little attention to the elements of leadership that are required at all levels within schools, from the classroom through to the principal. It is essential that leadership skills be built into the professional learning programmes for all school staff engaged in school-based innovations.
Policy needs to be proactive in establishing an environment that maximises support for innovation as the vehicle for developing the capacity for schools to fulfil their crucial role in meeting the challenges of the knowledge-society and knowledge-economy. First, there needs to be clarity of the nature of the system of schooling that is required:
We will be thinking in terms of individual schools, not systems of schools. That is indeed the rub, for to keep putting schooling into the straightjacket of what we have come to regard as schools is inhibiting, it approaches planning from the wrong end of the spectrum, and it closes the mind to the most exciting of prospects for the twenty-first century...[we need to transform schools] away from a tightly meshed control-oriented institution and into a professionally liberated network bounded by the mission of serving a population of learners... . (Beare, 2001:94)
The devolution that has been the focus of much educational reform over the past decade has proceeded much further in some systems than in others. The evidence from this research supports a continuation of these reforms to provide schools with the opportunities to address the further challenges that lie ahead:
...[the new model of schooling will be an] enterprise with increased legal and professional responsibilities in the form of a global budget, wide discretion over funding, the responsibility to select its own staff as well as to fill its promotion positions from the Principal down, the management and upkeep of its physical plant...Individual schools [will] have the power to go into the marketplace and buy any specialist services which are required to supplement the work of their own teachers and staff...Schools may share their expertise, pool their resources, contract-in services, or contribute to the cost of a specialist consultancy. They may set up their own school support centres to take on the role of broker for a set of schools, owned and managed by a cluster of schools . (Beare, 2001:178)
The challenge of educational policy can be put no more starkly than the way it was presented in a speech three years ago to the Australian College of Education by one of the nation's longest-serving Directors-General of Education:
...Public education systems behave as if they are monopolies serving the interests of the producers - that is the institutionalised `stake-holders', including state departments of education, teacher unions and various interest groups-rather than the...students and parents for whom the schools exist.
We must put function before form, strategy before structure: we must set aside the existing industrial agenda in favour of one driven strictly by educational priorities; we must ensure that the provision of education for the next generation is not limited by the structure of schooling we have inherited from the past; and we must shed the debilitating defensiveness with which we often respond to proposals for change.
If we fail to create our own future we will have one thrust upon us . (Boston, 1997:2-4)
Much remains to be achieved before educational policy in Australia provides a context for innovation that allows schools to respond effectively to the challenges of the emerging knowledge-society and knowledge-economy. The formal and informal constraints and inflexibilities imposed by the `rules and regulatory frameworks' of schooling (Angus, 1998) are clearly one area that policy needs to address.
The urge to transform schools through top-down reforms is a strategy that is difficult to resist for educational bureaucracies. Such bureaucracies do not have strong standing in the eyes of educational professionals when it comes to the core business of schooling, effective teaching and learning. The standing of educational bureaucracies derives mainly from their authority to manage the resources allocated for schooling and their power to shape the organisation of schooling. The knowledge base of teaching and learning resides principally in schools, and it is critical that this resource be harnessed to the task of shaping the future of schooling. This is a task of educational leadership, rather than one of educational management.
The 107 schools that participated in the IBPP show that given appropriate conditions, the professionalism and energy of teachers and other staff in schools can produce the innovative responses that are capable of responding to the challenges ahead. The IBPP was successful in supporting innovation in the participating schools, and in providing new knowledge about the nature of school-based innovation and the factors that support and constrain innovation. It also documented a range of strategies and models that work better than standard practices. The broader policy agenda now needs to focus on how the future of schools in Australia can be supported and informed by encouraging innovation.
Governments need to complement their urge to reform-and their inclination, when reform does not work, simply to reform some more- with policies for innovation. For innovation is mostly `bottom-up' and small-scale, it is what the imaginative and responsive school does when it encounters problems and challenges or when it thinks out a better way of doing something...What is happening in the more peripheral areas of the education service may be a better indicator of what is to survive in tomorrow's mainstream school...The prudent course is to let the schools themselves search for this much-needed knowledge and test out, through innovation, what works in new conditions . (Hargreaves, 1999: 54)
If true innovation, for example in teaching practices, derives from the bottom up, government control is more likely to get in the way of genuine school improvement rather than promote it. [Kennedy, 1999] formulated the maxim that governments should therefore move from control to leadership. This does not imply complete autonomy for schools, and governments have a legitimate interest in pursuing fundamental equity issues, to ensure that all children have access to a demanding set of knowledge and skills . (Hirsch, 1999:99)
The IBPP strongly supports the conclusions of a recent OECD study of school innovation across twenty-five countries (Hirsch, 1999). It concluded that policies for the effective integration of reform and innovation should include:
- recognition that some areas of action may be constrained by external priorities;
- effective integration of the old and the new to ensure the changes are sustainable;
- an emphasis on innovations that can be evaluated and proven to be more effective than standard practices; and
- distributed leadership within schools that is effective at mediating the top-down nature of reforms and regulations with the bottom-up nature of innovation driven by the professional learning of teachers and commitment of teachers, students and parents.
By focusing the attention of educational policy on innovation and the professional knowledge-creation function of schools, the future will be dominated less by a sense of crisis or failure than it is when policy is focused on top-down reform. There is much to celebrate and learn from schools across the nation, much more than there is in any other part of the education system.