The case study refers to leadership reflections as new leaders in a small Sydney High School (360 students). The school leaders focused on enhancing community profile in order to build enrolments and community confidence in the school.
Case Study
The case-study uses a range of contemporary evaluation rolls for strategic planning and evaluative thinking and unpacks the role of culture and context in evidenced based practice. The session specifically:
- Evaluated the need to reason and explicitly unpack a problem of practice
- Considered a range assessment and reflection processes
- Reflected on context and culture and its importance in successful school evaluation and change
Participants used the processes of the case study to address a contextual problem of practice in their school community.
Outcomes/evidence/achievements
The concluding learnings shared by the presenters included:
- Importance of critically analysing data at all stages of the project- make data bespoke
- Processes are elastic, not static, we need to abandon a rigid continuum model and allow for more loops
- Purpose: Always be clear about ‘the why’- when the focus becomes on compliance and timeline and the ‘why’ is lost, the true focus of the work is lost and staff buy in diminishes
- You should be able to defend the evaluation as methodically and conceptually robust
- Evaluative thinking is important mindset and skill set; it’s important to ask the right questions and suspend judgement. Be open to alternative explanations
Specific reference to Gonski 2.0
Recommendation:
Recommendation 21:
Enhance school and system internal self-review and external quality assurance processes, for the purposes of monitoring and reviewing student learning gain and achievement.
Finding:
Finding 17:
To sustain continuous improvement, Australian schools need access to: valid and reliable evidence of effective teaching practice; independent and rigorous evaluations of commercial and other teaching and educational interventions; and the most recent findings on educational innovation and research – in an accessible format that can be readily translated into classroom use.