The findings in this chapter are based on visits to 26 schools in six states and one territory. Four case study schools were selected as being highly flexible on the basis of information provided in school research reports.
This section illustrates four kinds of flexibility introduced by schools through innovation. Rather than being typical of the 107 innovations, these types of flexibility have been selected because they demonstrate changes that schools made to enhance instructional flexibility. Each type is illustrated by a case study.
The four types of flexibility discussed are:
- off-site learning;
- flexible student grouping;
- flexible use of staff; and
- school consortia.
The purpose of the case studies is to give a deeper sense of the nature of changes schools made and the consequences of such changes once put into practice. Because schools are very complex institutions with interlocking structures, it is difficult to represent all the issues even in case studies. An attempt has been made to represent some important points about flexibility without going into too much detail. Hopefully, this shorthand will not detract from the authentic work undertaken in all the contexts represented.
The case of off-site learning
Ten of the 107 schools in the IBPP reported that their innovations involved the use of facilities away from school premises. The sites included acquiring additional space, using commercial properties and using students' homes for learning.
Acquiring space
The first use involved St Henry's College, a Catholic boys' secondary school located near the centre of a large capital city. This school sought to make a symbolic statement to the boys that a programme, delivered off site to develop their sense of social responsibility, would be different from the other `subjects' taught in the school. "Some of the students [in the programme] are considered "at risk". Others are boys who it is felt are not catered for adequately in the normal curriculum of the College".
Two aspects of the shift to the off-site venue warrant mention. The boys were no longer in a familiar form of student-teacher relationship. The instructor, a dramatist, was not a teacher and the programme was not concerned with the acquisition of knowledge, at least not in the usual sense. Also, the programme lasted for a whole day each week. The off-site venue required the boys to be absent from school for one out of six days in the timetable cycle. And the absence from school required the students involved to take compensatory action to ensure that they maintained the academic requirements for the course. In its second year, after it had established its legitimacy, the programme returned to campus. This move did not discount the value of the initial separation.
The use of commercial properties
Two schools made use of commercial properties, but for very different reasons. Although in both cases the schools gained ready access to shops and businesses, neither of them had `shop fronts' as such.
Blackett College developed `city savvy' in Year 9 students using a central business district base provided through a university. A major aspect of this programme was the responsibility placed on students for their conduct when they were outside the direct supervision of school staff.
The second example, the North Spring Consortium of Schools, is described as a case study in the section on school consortia.
Home-based study: a case study
Lyons is a government secondary school, for Year 7-10 students in a capital city. Although 40 per cent of students receive government assistance for schooling, almost all students (97 per cent) continue study by enrolling in a senior secondary course after graduating.
Two courses, Computers and Information and World Studies , allow students a choice of three delivery modes. These are:
- a block-scheduled evening class;
- an on-line virtual format; and
- the original courses programmed within the school-day timetable.
The school wrote to its system authorities and obtained approval for the alternative delivery.
The choice of delivery modes is not entirely that of students. Students must have formally documented parental support, a requirement that is not a barrier for most students. Students are encouraged to choose an instructional mode on the basis of its compatibility with their learning style, other subjects that they have chosen and lifestyle preferences.
Lyons Secondary School is structured along traditional secondary school lines. The school week is divided up into a standard 35 period timetable. The only variation to this pattern occurs with the two courses, Computers and Information and World Studies for which new delivery modes were introduced in 1997.
The introduction of the new delivery modes came about as a solution to the problem of greater demand for computer use than could be satisfied with the hardware available in the school. The evening and virtual courses were introduced as a means of freeing computer laboratories, particularly those with the newer, better computers, for use during the periods of peak demand, that is, during the school day. The school has since purchased more computers and is better placed to meet demand but there is no intention of reverting to the traditional delivery mode.
Reviewing the innovation in a formal sense was fairly straightforward for the school. As the innovation consists of two courses that are also taught through conventional methods, the participation and academic results could be readily compared. Because there was a degree of risk-taking involved in the changes, this formal comparison was an important means of legitimising the deviation from tradition.
The students were very positive about the changes. They liked being able to choose and then feel responsible for making that choice work. Many had better computing equipment at home than the school could provide so it made sense to work there. From a student perspective, the challenge was to see if they could manage their time such that they could fit more activities into their busy lives. Some chose to select an extra subject during the school-day timetable or commit to sporting teams after school. Others liked being able to complete their homework in free periods during the school day or just being able to have more control over their time. It was a lesson in flexibility for the students themselves.
The implications for students went deeper than just convenience, as the following comments from two individuals indicate.
You learn a lot about yourself, about your own personal drive and how you can work at developing that.
It's good practice for next year [at senior college]. We learn that it's a lot easier to do something just gradually over four weeks instead of rushing to get it done in one or two at the end.
The new delivery methods assisted students to develop a consciousness of how they were maturing and how they could most productively exercise their responsibilities as learners. The staff provided similarly positive accounts of new course formats. The principal said that the success of the innovation meant that similar choices could easily be provided in other courses. Interestingly, however, this is yet to occur. He explained:
The money is not the point, even the structure is not the point. It's the beliefs that people will depend on when they see a kid in the corridor and ask, `What are you doing? They need to be aware that there is a good chance that the kid is in the corridor because he worked back until 6pm so that he could find time during the school day to help the music teacher with some of the younger students.
Taking account of such practicalities was all part of institutionalising the changes. The principal explained the dilemma they face.
Calling a thing an innovation can be a death wish. The name `lighthouse school' is an apt metaphor. A lighthouse is there to warn people not to come near the rocks. Lighthouse projects need to be de-sensationalised as soon as possible so that people feel safe about proceeding with them.
This caution may explain some of the success of practices that might easily frighten others.
The case of flexible student grouping
Changes to the manner in which students are grouped were a central feature of some innovations. For example, 22 per cent of schools introduced multi-aged grouping and eight per cent created a new subgroup consisting of students with special needs. Thirteen per cent of reports indicated that students were grouped into streams while twenty per cent referred to the use of mixed groups. Two thirds of school research reports remained silent on the issue of ability-streamed versus mixed groups.
The most significant form of student grouping in terms of flexibility, however, involved grouping students differently for different purposes in a two-tiered organisational structure. Twelve per cent of schools reported introducing some version of this structure to facilitate learning.
Two-tiers of student grouping
In the first tier of a two-tier structure, students are grouped into classes of up to 30 students. Such classes are a common feature of many schools. An association between a teacher and a class remains intact for at least a school year and facilitates many aspects of school organisation. Classrooms are generally built to hold up to 30 students, and grouping students on this basis is an economical use of teacher resources and most teachers are experienced in managing groups of this size. A fixed group over an extended period of time also provides students with a constant adult figure as a social and emotional reference point.
The problem with class groups of this kind is that teachers are confronted with a large number of students with diverse instructional needs, hence, the need to build an additional component onto this basic structure.
Students are clustered into smaller groups for particular instructional purposes. Often students with similar needs will be drawn from across a number of classes. This second tier of student grouping enables fluid readjustments as circumstances change. By monitoring student progress and then clustering the students that have the most similar instructional needs, teachers can more effectively match their inputs with student needs.
Any teacher can create groups within a class, and many do. Using two levels of student grouping across several classes provides broader opportunities than those available to an individual teacher with a single class group. Complementary organisational features such as concurrent scheduling of teachers of similar class groups and the allocation of support staff enable teachers to collaborate to develop their knowledge of students and capacity to respond to their needs.
Flexible groupings in literacy schools
The use of two-tiered student groups was a strategy evident in many of the primary schools developing literacy innovations. Four schools reported participating in the Early Literacy Research Project (ELRP) developed and implemented by Crévola and Hill in association with the Victorian Department of Education (Crévola & Hill, 1998b). Other schools had experience of this programme and were attempting to apply its principles in other areas of instruction; for example, mathematics and teaching literacy to older students. Another school innovation demonstrated features parallel to the ELRP but had developed them independently.
The difficulties experienced by Watson Primary School in another state illustrate the limitations of using two-tiered instructional grouping in isolation from other aspects of Crévola and Hill's model. This government primary school is situated in a low socio-economic area. Although it is allocated additional funds in recognition of this, these are not included in the school's per capita grant but are provided at different levels and for different purposes each year. Therefore, resources are precarious.
Also, in this school, the small groups were made possible by increasing the number of `teachers'. The literacy coordinator, administrators, support teachers, non-teaching support staff and parents are all used. This places the small groups in jeopardy because when staff members are absent there is no one left to fill any gaps. The small groups are not used on a daily basis.
Flexible instructional grouping: a case study
East Park Primary School applied the principles of the ELRP with finesse. The school had a literacy focus for some years beforehand but was not satisfied with the results until participating in the ELRP.
An important feature of East Park Primary School's innovation is the perseverance required. It is not until the student's third year of instruction, that is, when they are in Year 2, that their attainments reach the point where the improvement is sufficiently pronounced for staff to recognise their intervention is clearly working. Two-tiered student grouping is just one enabling structure evident in the school.
A prominent feature of the school's approach to literacy is the consistency shown among teachers. As the assistant principal said:
At the end of the day, we had everybody facing in the same direction.
The commonalities among the teachers, however, do not reflect a rigid or static view of teaching.
We had to change as a part of the [ELRP] Project and that change has been continuous. The Project is now over but we are going to continue changing because of the processes we have put in place. We are going to be driving ourselves on the basis of looking at the assessment of the students and reflecting on our classroom practice.
The combination of flexibility and instructional capacity is a powerful one that is most evident at the classroom level. However, such designs do not operate in a vacuum. East Park Primary School has participated in the state system's devolution programme, Schools of the Future, for six years. As a result it is about to undergo its second school review. The link between the review and the innovation is a direct one. The first review drew attention to the low literacy levels of the students.
It is since Schools of the Future that we have learnt to look seriously at data, to use it and, or course, to question its validity.
The review process was one factor that enabled the innovation. The school also benefits from a differential school resourcing policy that determines the level of per capita grants on the basis of the socio-economic status of the students. As a school with a high proportion of students from a non-English speaking background, the school is allocated additional `special needs' resources. Special needs funding is not subject to the vagaries of educational fashions, hence, there is a capacity to make commitments that span several years.
As the early literacy programme is a high priority, other teachers are scheduled to support class teachers during the two-hour block of time allocated to literacy. However, rather than allocating all the adults available in the school to small groups, students are taught to work independently while the available teachers each instruct a small group. The groups are then rotated. This approach strengthens the students' independent work skills. Students are also required to develop the organisational skills necessary to rotate between groups that engage them in quite different, albeit mutually supporting, activities.
The two-tiered student grouping structure is just one cog in the innovation wheel. It is a means through which teachers can focus their instruction on detailed knowledge of the student's learning levels and needs. It would not make sense without teachers being conversant with the relationship between their actions and their students' progress.
This school's experience demonstrates the manner in which structures at all levels—system, school and classroom—can be aligned to maximise the capacity of teachers to respond flexibly to changing student needs.
The case of flexible staffing
Subject specialisation can impose a major constraint on the organisation of secondary schools. Generally, teachers are recruited on the basis of subject expertise in a small number of areas. The availability of teachers to teach certain subjects is likely to be one of the parameters within which timetabling decisions are made. The need for teachers to work in the subject area in which they are trained and specialised can be so strong that changes to a school's programme may be linked to turnover of staff.
Fifteen IBPP schools adopted structures requiring teachers to teach outside their area of subject specialisation. These innovations generally occurred within the context of middle schooling approaches introduced to strengthen the social and emotional ties between teachers and their students. Generally, these schools adopted a gradualist approach to change, commencing an innovation in Year 7 and building it up over a number of years.
One of the reasons that teaching outside areas of subject specialisation attracted interest was that several schools indicated that they had considered this option and it had been rejected by the staff. Also, there was evidence that some middle- schooling strategies were developed in order to avoid a requirement for teachers to teach outside their preferred subject. An example of this is Brostherne College that introduced subject specialist teachers into the upper primary years in order to prepare students for this `fact' of secondary school life. Other schools introduced multi-subject teams with shared responsibility for several lower secondary classes. These teachers would meet to discuss their students in an effort to introduce cohesion into the provision for young secondary students.
Teaching outside an area of specialisation: a case study
While teaching in areas of subject specialisation was the norm, the introduction of teaching outside these became a source of opportunity for teachers at Holy Spirit Catholic College. They did not see the change as an obstacle.
The impetus for the innovation was teachers' experiences of 240 energetic 12 year olds commencing secondary school at the beginning of Year 7. At this point, it was possible for students to have contact with 15 different teachers in a year. The initial structure, introduced in 1996, enabled the Year 7 cohort to be divided into classes of 30 and assigned three teachers who taught two subjects each. This meant that all students had three teachers who would get to know their pastoral and learning needs extremely well. Concern about the pastoral care of students, a core function in Catholic schools, was the starting point for this change process.
A process of trial and reflection led the concept to be refined further so that students' instructional needs could be considered in conjunction with their pastoral needs. A more complex organisational structure was developed during this process. Year 7 classes were assigned two core teachers who taught three subjects each and who made it clear to the students from the beginning that they had primary responsibility for the class. The teachers were given time to meet each other as a part of their allocated teaching loads. As might be expected, these teachers formed strong attachments to their Year 7 classes and many requested that they continue with the same group of students when they entered Year 8. In fact, the bonds formed between teacher and class have provided further impetus for organisational change; when the first Year 7 classes graduated, planning to extend the innovation into Year 8 commenced.
In 1998, the innovation was extended to include Year 8 classes. The initial model (3 teachers x 2 subjects) was dovetailed with the Year 7 model after several versions had been tested (2 teachers x 3 subjects). The pattern is illustrated in Figure 7.1 below. The adoption of this arrangement had an impact on most aspects of timetabling in the school.
Teachers are not asked or even encouraged to specialise in teaching middle schooling. Rather, they balance their multi-subject teaching of Year 7 and 8 students with senior secondary teaching in their specialist area. This provides an element of flexibility. When a teacher wants to teach the same three subjects to Year 7 students in consecutive years to consolidate her skills, the timetable can accommodate this without interfering with the commitment to teach the same group for two subjects as Year 8s.
Providing teachers with opportunities to develop their teaching skills is an important aspect of the school ethos. Without these opportunities, it is unlikely that so many teachers would be confident enough to teach outside their preferred subject area.
A very practical form of support is provided through the timetable. Each novice works with a subject-specialist teaching the same subject to the same year level at the same time in the classroom next door. This provides mentors to teachers as they extend their knowledge and skills outside familiar teaching areas.
The design of the staffroom provides another practical form of support. Like most staff rooms, it consists of a large area for informal gatherings. The difference is that two large offices that accommodate all the teaching staff surround this area. Teachers working at their desks or having a cup of tea in the informal area are all highly accessible to each other. Journeys along covered walkways in search of colleagues working in satellite offices are no longer necessary.
Figure 7.1: Arrangements for Year 7 and 8 classes at Holy Spirit Catholic college showing continuing teachers.
The Holy Spirit school community has made a conscious decision to orient itself towards professional development. Although external consultants and programmes have been important sources of professional support, there is also an expectation that all staff members will provide training for their colleagues. This is a regular, programmed part of the school's routine.
An example of how this works came up in the discussion about the changes to the timetable. The staff member responsible for the timetable provided a series of training sessions to those interested in how to timetable. Understandably, once this expertise was shared, some members of the training group began expressing their own views about the timetable. This led to the formation of another group from among those who had been trained. It was agreed that this group should then explore some options in more depth with a view to planning for improvements.
Much of the evaluation of the innovation at Holy Spirit is tied to teachers' organisational experiences. The initial interest in strengthening pastoral care was driven by teachers' observations of a sea of Year 7 students floundering for two terms until they all got to know each other. The capacity of the school staff to articulate and share such observations gave them a degree of formality and status. The initial model (3 teachers x 2 subjects) was then adapted and compared with an alternative version. The result of these comparisons was to settle quite definitely on the first model. The alternative version, however, proved to be the preferred model for Year 8 students.
A significant focus on student performance is unavoidable in secondary schools. Not only are secondary schools driven by external measures of academic performance, these measures are also widely published and the schools identified. Holy Spirit teachers expressed concerns about allowing even more emphasis on a results-driven curriculum. Unlike East Park Primary School, discussed earlier, where measures used to monitor students' progress drove the teachers' instructional programme, Holy Spirit Secondary School teachers chose not to be driven by attainment benchmarks. They were also concerned that invalid measurement tools could orient the programme in the wrong direction. Instead, instruction was guided by outcomes stated in the NSW syllabii, the requirements of which were satisfied by the school's implementation of its integrated curriculum.
The case of school consortia
Forming associations to gain support
Nearly half of all schools in the IBPP reported that associations with organisations outside the school facilitated their innovation. As shown in Table 7.1, approximately a quarter acknowledged their association with school system authorities to be a key source of support.
Table 7.1: Percentage of schools reporting that a relationship with another organisation played a part in their innovation (N=107).
|
Organisation |
Percentage |
|
School system |
22 |
|
University |
16 |
|
National Schools Network |
14 |
|
Similar schools |
11 |
|
Contributing primary schools |
6 |
|
Public sector service provider |
6 |
|
Business |
6 |
|
Local community |
6 |
|
TAFE |
5 |
Of the associations among education providers, the most common form was when a school established links with similar schools. Seventeen per cent of schools indicated some form of association with other schools. Seven per cent of the IBPP schools developed stable links with similar schools, for example, one group of schools decided to collaborate to gain access to external professional development consultants on an ongoing basis. One form of association, based on shared interests, involved some secondary schools establishing transition programmes with their contributing primary schools. In some cases, links were more transitory, as in the case of three per cent of schools that reported visiting other schools as a reference point for their own practice.
Three schools had sufficiently strong and ongoing relationships with other schools for them to be usefully described as members of a consortium of schools. These schools recognised the advantages of choosing their associates and developing strong ties. The case study example reported below was chosen because the consequences of the association are so extensive. Also, as a free association, any group of schools could introduce such a structure should they see an advantage in doing so.
A consortium of schools: a case study
Four IBPP primary schools in a regional population centre founded a consortium based on the recognition of shared interests. This consortium began as a result of an informal conversation among three of the four principals. At a practical level, they recognised that fragments of resources in each school could be pooled to provide something more substantial. They also saw opportunities to develop in other ways if they could step outside the walls of professional isolation that surrounded the individual primary schools.
As was the case with many innovations, the consortium members started with an idea, then found it didn't offer the advantages they had expected. They began by creating two additional Head of Department positions. Then they quickly recognised that they had selected a bureaucratic solution, so changed tack. The next step devolved management to the teachers in the four schools. This led to the creation of greater professional development and support capacity across the schools. Some of the services provided by the consortium are very practical; for example, assisting teachers to use computers. Others are more strategic; for example, employing a professional development consultant on a three-year contract. There is also an entrepreneurial element to the Consortium's activities. It has successfully bid for grants from `external' bodies such commonwealth and state government departments and its own school system.
By pooling the collective wisdom of staff across four schools as well as fragments of resources, the consortium members developed a degree of professional confidence that many educators find illusory. One outcome of this confidence was the decision to go out on a limb to extend school provision through the establishment of the Alternative Campus.
As the executive officer of the consortium said:
It is good that we charged into this because we didn't see the blockers until afterwards. We see that as a strength.
Non-recurrent grants have provided funding to get things going. Per capita grants provide some resources. The campus is legally a programme of one of the consortium primary schools. The students are enrolled in this school and the alternative campus' account is administered through one of the schools.
The consortium has increased one group's capacity to alter the structures in which schooling is provided, but it needs support to institutionalise these changes. Currently, there is not sufficient alignment between the school system in which the innovation sits and the innovation itself. Ongoing concerns - such as questions about duty of care - arise from the fact that, to date, the campus does not fit into an appropriate administrative category and for the time being has been defined by the system authorities as a `classroom' of a traditional primary school. In fairness to the school system, it is likely that this results from insufficient resources to enable the extension of its service provision without an additional procuration from Treasury.
Differential provision
Most of the schools in the IBPP reported that an important feature of their innovation was the way it helped target teaching to the needs of individual students. This is not altogether surprising since the development of teaching and learning environments that match the needs of individual students has been a long-standing objective of educators. A much smaller proportion of respondents reported that their innovations were targeting students at risk of not making satisfactory progress.
Though there is general awareness that substantial individual differences exist within a typical class of students, the magnitude of the differences is not always appreciated. For example, the reading skills of 10 per cent of Year 9 students are likely to be no better than the reading skills of an average Year 3 student (Hill, 1994). Teaching to the average ability level will ensure that struggling students fall further behind. These students require a disproportionate amount of teacher time and school resources. However, organising schools and classrooms in such a way that teachers are able to respond effectively to the wide range of differences continues to challenge the education profession.
School administration involves compromise. Usually, there seem to be too few resources and too little time to organise schools in ways that sufficiently individualise instruction. Also, it is easier to standardise provision rather than to vary it since standardisation can be used to avoid arguments over whether teachers and students are being treated fairly. Notwithstanding these difficulties, many of the innovations in IBPP experimented with flexible grouping practices in ways that challenged the tyranny of the conventional timetable.
Successfully matching instructional programmes to particular students' needs can significantly improve the performance of large groups of students. Ultimately, this leads to demand for additional resources to be directed to enable failing students to reach benchmarks. The differential allocation of resources has implications at every level of schooling. Teachers can develop diagnostic and instructional expertise. Schools can release resources from a non-priority area to enable more intensive or strategic instruction when appropriate. Ultimately, however, schools must have control of their budgets, particularly the largest element that is teacher salaries, to be in a position to redirect them. Critical to the capacity of schools to redirect resources to support innovative practices and organisational arrangements is control over the recruitment, selection, and appointment of staff.
Alignment
Sociologists have observed that a feature of educational organisations is that administrative components are weakly connected, or to use Weick's (1976) term, `loosely coupled'. The component parts-schools, district offices, central and other specialised agencies-are inclined to function autonomously. Organisational charts, showing the relationships among the various components in a school system, tend to indicate a much higher level of coherence and coordination than is actually the case. The relatively weak connections, produced in part by inconsistencies among policies and regulations, have been recognised in the literature as a major obstacle to systemic reform, that is innovation that is designed to change the way the whole system operates (Fuhrman, 1994).
This study suggests that loose coupling can also restrict locally targeted innovation because inflexibility at various organisational levels impinges on classroom practices. However, the study also shows that it is possible to repair the disconnections. Some schools were able to effect an alignment in regard to their project at all relevant levels of schooling-classroom, school and system. From the point of view of those working in a school, they were able to formulate their projects in such a way that `the system' worked for them rather than against them. This was more the case in schools that documented ongoing, data- driven changes.
Effecting alignment was achieved in different ways. Usually, it involved project leaders and school principals negotiating with various parties to ensure that the resources required to conduct the innovation were committed, that the approval of key interest groups and decision-making bodies was negotiated and acquired, and that within the school there was a sufficient constituency of support to enable the innovation to proceed. Interestingly, the politics of the innovations was not widely canvassed in the school research reports. However, it would be a mistake to underestimate the importance of this aspect and assume that the innovations were implemented without resistance from parties with vested interests in maintaining the status quo.
Schools that focused their innovations at the teacher-student (or classroom) level without concern about the impact of events at other levels were inclined to step back from initial advances. Without commensurate adjustments at the school level, the burden of sustaining changes rested on a small number of individuals.
While only a few schools made some reference to the role of their system in their innovation, there was evidence of a consistency of approach or an alignment at all levels, including the central level, in the schools that made the most significant changes.
The problem of a lack of alignment is a feature of large education systems. Fullan (1998) concluded that the `system' is intrinsically non-linear and endemically fragmented and incoherent. This, he argued, is the very nature of dynamically complex societies. The consequence is that members require the capacity to learn despite the system. In some cases in the IBPP, association with other agencies such as other schools and universities provided the support required to assist with capacity building in the absence of system alignment. Even so, schools found it difficult to obtain a level of support from such associations commensurate with that available from an aligned system.