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Pre & Post Conference Workshops

 

LEADING FROM THE MIDDLE

Presenter        : Professor Andy Hargreaves

Dates              : 6 March 2017 Monday

Venue             : Suntec Singapore Convention & Exhibition Centre

Time                : 9:00AM to 5:00PM

Closing Date  : 19 February 2017, Sunday

Workshop Fee:

S$350.00 per participant. If 2 or more participants from the same school/organization attend the same workshop, the discounted fee will be S$300.00 per participant for that particular workshop. Fees include all training materials, 2 tea breaks and a lunch for both days.

Other Information:

Registration is on a first-come-first serve basis. No refunds will be made for cancellations or in the case of absentees. The Academy accepts replacements for registered participants who are unable to attend for whatever reasons.

Click here to register for the workshop

Workshop Description

Should schools lead change from the bottom up? Or should governments lead change from the top down? This lecture shows there is a third way – leading from the middle. Drawing on his current research on educational reform in Ontario, on developing networks among rural schools in four US states, on unusually high performance in different sectors, and on professional collaboration in 7 countries, Andy Hargreaves will show how schools and school systems can and should work together to initiate, implement and diffuse large-scale change that benefits many students in many schools.

Leading from the middle builds the professional capital among teachers and leaders that leads in turn to increased achievement and engagement among students. Leading from the middle addresses what school leaders and system leaders can do to ensure every child gets great teaching every year. It calls on bold leadership at the top and deep collaboration everywhere else.

Leading from the Middle is about responding to diversity rather than imposing uniformity; it is about collective responsibility more than top down accountability; and it is about lateral transparency of participation as well as hierarchical accountability for results.

About the Presenter

Andy Hargreaves is the Thomas More Brennan Chair in the Lynch School of Education at Boston College. Before that, he was the co-founder and co-Director of the International Centre for Educational Change at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

Andy has authored or edited over 30 books, several of which have achieved outstanding writing awards from the American Educational Research Association, the American Libraries Association, and the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. One of these, Professional Capital: Transforming Teaching in Every School (with Michael Fullan, 2012) has received three prizes including the $100,000 Grawemeyer Award in Education for 2015.

Andy serves as adviser in education to the Premier of Ontario, is founding editor of two scholarly journals, and is President Elect of the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement. He holds an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Uppsala in Sweden. In January 2015, he was ranked the #6 scholar with most influence on US policy.

Andy consults with organizations and governments all over the world. His most recent book is Uplifting Leadership (with Alan Boyle and Alma Harris) published by Jossey Bass Business, 2014.

 


 

DISTRIBUTED LEADERSHIP: SYSTEMIC CHANGE

THROUGH EMPOWERED TEACHER LEADERS

 

Presenters        : Dr John A. DeFlaminis & Dr Patricia Baxter

Dates              : 9 March 2017 Thursday

Venue             : Suntec Singapore Convention & Exhibition Centre

Time                : 9:00AM to 5:00PM

Closing Date  : 19 February 2017, Sunday

Workshop Fee:

S$350.00 per participant. If 2 or more participants from the same school/organization attend the same workshop, the discounted fee will be S$300.00 per participant for that particular workshop. Fees include all training materials, 2 tea breaks and a lunch for both days.

Other Information:

Registration is on a first-come-first serve basis. No refunds will be made for cancellations or in the case of absentees. The Academy accepts replacements for registered participants who are unable to attend for whatever reasons.

Click here to register for the workshop

Workshop Description

Leadership Matters. It is almost impossible to read any educational publication without finding multiple references to the importance of leadership for improving schools and promoting student learning. Leithwood, et.al., (2004), for example, found that “leadership is second only to classroom instruction among all school-related factors that contribute to what students learn at school” (p.5).  The Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago identified leadership as the first essential support for school improvement (Sebring, Allensworth, Bryk, Easton & Luppusco, 2006).  Leithwood and his colleagues (2006) also found that school leadership has a greater influence on schools and students when it is distributed widely, and schools with the highest student achievement attributed their success, to distributed sources of leadership. And, Harris (2014) writes that “contemporary evidence increasingly points towards a positive relationship between distributed leadership, organizational improvement, and student achievement” (p. 50).

Any consideration of leadership and organizational improvement must explore the definition of systems change which is change that pervades all parts of a system taking into account the interrelationships and interdependencies among its parts.  This is consistent with Senge’s (1990) systems thinking as a discipline for seeing the wholes which is a framework for seeing the interrelationships and patterns of change rather than static snapshots.  It also invites consideration of the infrastructures within systems as defined by Spillane (2006) as “those structures and resources that are mobilized by school systems and school organizations to enable (and constrain) classroom teaching, maintain instructional quality, and lead instructional innovation.” 

This full day session will focus on Distributed Leadership as a means of systemic change enacted through empowered teachers and principals who see and carry out this process systematically through the interrelationships within a school building to accomplish together as leaders what individual leaders cannot do themselves. This session will describe what happens, how it happens, and how it effects the structure and culture of the school-when done effectively.  Participants will gain a clear understanding of an operational definition, the contextual rationale and need for Distributed Leadership, the Project Design, and implementation process within a clearly articulated Theory of Change and Project Logic Model.  The critical aspects of successful operationalization and implementation of Spillane’s theory of Distributed Leadership and lessons learned from past and current projects will be explored with opportunities that involve session participants in small case leadership vignettes, a case study, and working materials from the recently published, “Distributed Leadership in Schools: A Practical Guide for Learning and Improvement” (DeFlaminis et. al., 2016).

Also addressed will be teacher empowerment and leadership in systemic infrastructures for curriculum and instructional growth through the lens of understanding the needs of your organization, development of a Theory of Action, and consideration of critical elements for sustainability.  Participants will be actively engaged in exploring and the applying the concepts of implementing Distributed Leadership.

About the Presenters

John A. DeFlaminis is the Executive Director of the Penn Center for Educational Leadership (PCEL) which is the outreach, technical assistance, training and development center for the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education.  Before coming to Penn in 2004, Dr. DeFlaminis served as the Superintendent of the Radnor Township School District for 5 terms and a total of 17 years. Prior to that time, he was assistant executive director in two intermediate service agencies in Pennsylvania, and held a faculty position at the University of Louisville. Throughout his career, his teaching has ranged from elementary to university teaching. He has also consulted with numerous organizations and has conducted hundreds of workshops and keynote speeches in many areas, especially key organizational processes such as leadership and motivation.  

In addition to leading the PCEL, John has developed and directed the Distributed Leadership (DL) Program at Penn which is based on the theory of Distributed Leadership developed by James Spillane.  The Distributed Leadership Program at the Penn Center for Educational Leadership represents one of the most robust and long-standing operationalizations of DL theory to date. This program has successfully been implemented in two school districts in the same urban context-one public in sixteen schools; one parochial district in nineteen schools; and a third rural in eight schools, over the past decade. The program has not only been a significant lever for school change, but also the site of substantial empirical research since the original Annenberg funded project featured a mixed method cluster randomized control trial. As such, the DL Program provided a unique opportunity to observe and learn from the translation of DL theory into school-based leadership practice(s).

John will draw on his 40+ years of experience in the field and the university working with school and district leaders to leverage a unique perspective and understanding of Distributed Leadership in his key note and daylong session. He will draw on his recent book, “Distributed Leadership in Schools: A Practical Guide for Learning and Improvement” (Routledge, 2016), as well as recently published articles authored with Alma Harris, and international leadership programs across the United States and with Singapore, China, Kazakhstan, and Chile to bring intellectual insights to this work.

Patricia Baxter is currently an independent consultant specializing in curriculum leadership.  She conducts PreK-12 program audits in public, charter, and independent schools, and has evaluated curriculum and programs in literacy, mathematics, science, technical and business education.  Patricia works with district and building administrators as they create infrastructures for curriculum, assessment, instruction, teacher evaluation, and data-driven decision processes for continuous improvement and sustainability.  Her work engages teacher participation and voice, and focuses on building capacity of teachers as leaders.

 

Patricia began her career in public education as an elementary and middle school teacher and literacy specialist.  After earning her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, she spent thirty years in K-12 curriculum leadership positions in public and independent schools.  She worked as an instructor and supervisor in the teacher education program at the University of Pennsylvania, and has taught graduate courses in qualitative research, literacy leadership, and early childhood issues and trends.  Patricia has been actively involved in the Distributed Leadership initiative for the Penn Center for Leadership.  She has delivered training modules for literacy, and is building parallel infrastructures for curriculum for student achievement in the current project set in an urban school district with the highest poverty levels in the state.

She has provided numerous professional development workshops in public, charter, and independent schools for principals and teachers on a variety of topics including curriculum development and implementation, teacher supervision, learning styles, and inquiry.  She is also the president of the board of a nonprofit organization with the vision of quality early care for all children in the city of Philadelphia.