Dr Terrence Quong Organisational Dynamics & Educational Leadership

I am excited and proud to be teaching EDA6048 Effective Educational Leadership in the Master program for the Education University of Hong Kong commencing on the 9 January 2017. Looking forward to working with the new students and learning from them as we explore school leadership together.

"An interesting story about not being on top of the class"
Having high expectations in school is good, very good, but this does NOT mean expecting to be Nos 1 in your class. Having High Expectations means striving to do as well as you can, while still having the energy and mind-space to learn other skills and build your capacity as a human being. Previously I have posted about the importance of "stories" in educational leadership. Here is a story; I really do not know if Mr Jack Ma said this or not ... and I admit I came across it on another site ("I am an Engineer to change the world") ... but seriously, true or not, it is a great story for school leaders to share with parents especially in Hong Kong and Asia.

"Facts are like Sports Trophies"
Like most educational leaders today, I believe in Evidence Based Practice. Evidence is vital to improving student outcomes. Education after all is the process of taking students from where they are at the start of the learning process to where they can be at the end, via many levels and stages. But how can you know if students are learning if you don't have evidence? Evidence is needed so that you can adjust and readjust learning programs, shift resources, change practices and strategies, and continuously redefine learning goals (in stages). BUT here's the thing --- Evidence ain't facts, evidence is about data that becomes knowledge when it enters into our 'stories' or narratives about what's happening in the teaching & learning process. For example, data like the percentage of students in a cohort who achieved 50% or more in an assessment, is not important until it enters someones narrative about how this byte of information is useful. The fact, by itself, is not useful evidence of anything.
Facts are like sports trophies, they are interesting to look at, but meaningless until the story is told.

“Facts don’t change behaviour, Stories do”
This is my belief. I know that the facts have to fit within my personal story, or they don’t resonate with me and I am very likely to discard or ignore them. Most everyone is the same. Want an example? A 50 year old principal was told by his doctor, after doing a full blood assessment; “The fact is, you have dangerously high blood pressure and cholesterol. I want you to start immediately on these drugs and you have to give up smoking”. The principal choose to take the blood pressure pills, but NOT to take the cholesterol drugs. He also kept smoking because in his story “The Cholesterol drugs are known to be dangerous (I read it on the internet) and smoking calms me down, if I give up smoking I will get even more stressed”.
There is an important lesson in this for leading change. School leaders cannot go into their staff room and convince teachers to adopt a change simply by stating the facts, yet so many try to do this. One of the keys to leading and managing change is to gently ignore the facts and go with the stories. After all, it’s the stories that change behaviour.

Intercultural School Leadership
Intercultural school leadership is about leading schools to produce citizens up to their necks in multicultural understanding, comfortable to wade through the major Western paradigms, but decisive and committed in swimming through life framed by their chosen system of beliefs. Intercultural school leaders achieve this by dealing effectively with the intercultural dilemmas of day-do-day school administration through informed and wise practice.
"Queuing up for the morning assembly, I was caught by a huge banner hanging over the school playground. It carried four words which captured my attention right there and then: Let Our Students Shine. As a Form One student, I was impressed. And later throughout my school life, I came to appreciate it was no mere slogan. It is reality. Thanks be to my school for providing me with so many opportunities and let me shine." [Hong Kong student 2016].
It is difficult to imagine such a quote coming from a typical Australian student about a banner hanging over their school grounds. Typically there would be cynicism, derision or at best disregard. Why? Because there is little doubt that, there is a strong emphasis on individual inquiry, personal responsibility and independent critical thinking in many Western schools. There is strong focus on individuality, curiosity and debate. A valuing of evidence based practice and technical thinking. This reflects a Western humanist tradition of learning. The purpose behind whole school commitment to ‘slogans’ such as “Let Our Students Shine”, is a form of collectivism and holistic education that falls outside this tradition.

Instructional Leadership and Puppet Answers
What are 'puppet answers'? They are the use of memorized, mark-oriented 'standard' answer structures in exams. It is where for the best of intentions, teachers wishing to get their students to pass exams, focus too much of their teaching on rote learning 'how to answer' questions. It results in examiners seeing generic answer structures in student’s scripts ... instead of critical thinking and mark down accordingly
While teaching students how to write answers to questions is important, it cannot become the MAIN goal of teaching. It can be hard to express a personal opinion or critical thought in a standarised answer structure.

With final essays due yesterday, this year's Organisational Dynamics EPA6094 course has been completed. Feeling sad; I will miss this class, great sharing and engagement. I wish you all the best on your ongoing journey into school leadership.

School Principal Elections?
The US elections and Donald Trump’s bid for presidency are big news at the moment. What I find fascinating is the critical discourse that this has created in the community. People are talking about Trump politics and beliefs in places as far away as Hong Kong and Australia. Imagine if you will, if the school principal was an elected position. How would things be different in the organizational dynamics of the school if every four years all the teachers, and parents got to vote for their leader? I’m ignoring the student vote unless they are over 18. Wouldn’t it be good if every school leader had to have an open platform of educational policies, goals, and a stated set of values and beliefs of what they ‘stand for’? Most importantly if these goals, policies and beliefs were shaped and molded by engaged critical discourse by teachers and parents; now that’s what I’d call a real Professional Learning Community. [Note; I’m not posting an image of Trump, if you don’t know what he looks like, where have you been?]

"Be HAPPY! The world needs Happy School Leaders"
Some statements give me pause to think, here’s one that I came across in the UK Telegraph Newspaper 23 Nov 2015.
“Modern head teachers have to be absolutely engaged with wellbeing and happiness, but have a tendency to “put off happiness until the weekend" and that has a detrimental effect on mood of the whole school. … School Heads are in a pivotal role to inspire happiness, because if they’re not feeling it on a Monday morning, then the staff won’t feel it and the kids won’t benefit from it.”
The article went on to state some mystical ‘fact’ that has to be taken with a grain of salt. "Your happiness is bigger than you individually," he continued, "it reaches three degrees of people removed from you, so if you’re really happy and positive, then every single person you meet during that day is going to be a minimum of 16 per cent happier, just because they met you”.
BUT the sentiment is real. Nothing affects the overall harmony and culture of a school like a grumpy and discontent principal. School Leaders must inspire happiness, even if there are times when circumstances rail against it, a positive mindset is essential to engagement.
Besides which, who wants to wait until the weekend to be happy?

Now this is what I call Leadership
Brain May was the co-founder of Queen (one of the best British rock bands ever!). In 2012 he was ranked as the 2'nd greatest guitarist of all time by Guitar World Magazine, and he was a major influence and recognized leader of the music industry in the UK. He was a rock star, song writer (“We Will Rock You”), band leader and producer. In 2005 the real Queen recognized his leadership in giving him a CBE for “services to music and charity”. Not content with these accomplishments, Brian May got his PhD in astrophysics in 2007. He studied at Imperial College London. His research thesis: A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud. He was a "science team collaborator" with NASA's New Horizons Pluto mission. For several years after he received his PhD, from 2008 until 2013, May held the leadership position of Chancellor at John Moores University in Liverpool.

For many, shifting one's mindset from classroom teacher to school leader can cause moments of turbulence. In the classroom student's often expect their teacher to be the source of all answers (not in constructivist classrooms of course), and to give directions and enforce rules... sometimes student's even think their teacher can be 'bossy' and that's OK as well (as long as the're not a bully). But after walking out of the classroom, and into the Staffroom, well things should be different ... but there can be momentary lapses back into "teaching" mode.