The principal, school improvement and valuing expertise above experience.

'We're actually very good here in Australia with kids who start below average. But that's often not recognised because there's more money in arguing that we're doing a bad job.'  Professor John Hattie and I talk about school improvement and the issue of putting experience before expertise when it comes to promotion and jobs.  He believes we will struggle to get people to join the education profession if we don't change this. John says he's not provocative. You be the judge....

Transcript

 Loretta  00:03

You're listening to Loretta Piazza, experienced school principal, mentor and coach. And together we're talking out at school. You will hear from leaders who have lived and breathed so many experiences, good and bad, agonized over decisions, and have tossed and turned through countless sleepless nights. These are the people who will help you stay ahead of the game.  

In my interview with John Hattie, I called him provocative. He says he much prefers to be known as curious. Whilst this is a great topic for debate, what we can all agree on is that John has made a huge contribution to the education landscape. He believes that we're very good at finding problems and fixing them. But we aren't as good at finding success and scaling it up. Our rhetoric tends to focus on the deficit. He also says that we're good at talking about curriculum, how we teach, planning, and how our kids are progressing. But we aren't confident in having conversations about the impact of our teachers. Too much emphasis is put on teacher experience, which doesn't necessarily equate to teacher expertise. Or more to the point, why isn't teacher expertise acknowledged and rewarded? This isn't a new concept. Nor is the notion that with acknowledged expertise and capability comes increasing distance from the classroom. Regardless of whether or not you think, like me, that John is provocative, there's no doubt about his passion, and his commitment to education.  Hello, John, welcome to Talking out of school.

John  01:56

Hello. It's great to be with you. 

Loretta  01:58

You've got a repertoire of research and books and so on behind you. Can you tell us a bit about your story, how this all started, and how you ended up at Melbourne Uni?

John  02:12

Well, my career in academia has been as a psychometrician. I'm the person who teaches those courses on research designers statistics that you'd love to take, don't  you Loretta?

Loretta  02:24

Oh, absolutely. I love maths!

John  02:28

Good. And so when I first started in academia, I was kind of welcomed. But I got the message very clearly that I wasn't mainstream. I wasn't part of the big picture, because all I did was sit in the back room and do statistics and measurement stuff. And what amused me in the early days was how every colleague took me into the room, closed the door, which was a bit ominous, and then told me that if I was going to be successful in education, I had to study what really made a difference to kids' learning. And my amusement was, everybody told me a different answer. And the answer they gave me was what they were doing. And we went to these staff meetings, and they talked like the Tower of Babel all over the place. And then I started to get a little involved in teacher education, I didn't really have much to do with it. And I discovered the same as teachers, they could all tell you what truly made a difference. And they're all different. And then I look one point of the curriculum. And what fascinated me is there's literally hundreds and hundreds of curriculums on the eastern and the western world and they all claim that they've got scope and sequence right, and they've got it right. And there's not much commonality at all. But they also it's absolutely essential that you do this. And so my amusement was, how come I'm in a profession, where every view is dominant, and everybody has evidence for their claims? Now, at the same time, as starting in academia, there was this new thing came out called meta analysis, which is a statistical way of synthesizing literature. And the best way to learn about it is to do one. So I did one, then I did another one. I did a few more. And then there was a moment hit me one day when I thought, maybe if I did a meta analysis of meta analyses, I might change the question from what works to what works best. And so began this hobby of collecting meta analyses and trying to put them together. And 10, 12 years ago, when I published Visible Learning, in many ways, my measurement-self stopped. And I've been the president of the International test community, I've been in that community, whole life, and this thing called visible learning took over. And so over the last 10 years, I've had a different career. And I've thoroughly enjoyed both of them and like to think of myself still as a measurement person, but being able to stand back and look at the questions we asked Loretta and stop saying what works, because, as I showed almost everything works if you ask the question, can you improve kids learning, but some works better than others. And then the other thing that's always fascinating, which has got me into an enormous amount of trouble is to ask, the next question is, under what conditions to certain things work? And what gets me into trouble is that there actually isn't many conditions that vary. What works best for kids here in Melbourne works best for kids in Shanghai. And in New York. What works best in maths works best and music, what works best with kids that are slower on the achievement progressions compared to it doesn't matter. That upsets teachers because they always believe their classes are unique. Of course, the kids are. But what works best doesn't vary that much. And so that's what I've been doing many years, about, when visible learning came out, I was working in New Zealand at the time, and we developed their assessment scheme for the schools. And the project was coming to an end, we created the product, we delivered it in schools, it was very successful in terms of it being used. In fact, I'm very proud of the fact that it's a voluntary system. And 70 to 80% of schools and teachers in New Zealand use it today, 20 years later. Not bad that they they like an assessment scheme. And so my team then got a bit worried that they were obviously going to be out of a job. So they said, could they implement visible learning? And I said, on a condition that I didn't have to go into schools, because I don't mind going in schools, I can do a good talk, but nothing happens. You know, what it's like. You get a speaker at four o'clock in an afternoon is the last thing you want. And it turned out that was a very good decision, because it was the essence of scaling is that when you run a professional learning based on an individual, you can't scale, it's very hard to scale. But when you run it on a set of principles, you can, and that taught me a lot about how to start scaling up. And now we work at about 10,000 schools a year around the world, with a with a scaled up model. And my measurement-self is very happy because I still get the data that I'm able to look at to see, are we actually making a difference to the learning lives of kids? And that's not what most professional learning stops with the teacher? Was the teacher happy? Was the teacher satisfied and did the teacher believe they learned? I'm not happy with that, Loretta, I want to go that next step and does it have an effect on them?

Loretta  07:16

I'm interested in you saying that kids all over the world have the same, they're unique, but they the countries are pretty much the same. So why is it that in places like Shanghai, they're doing so much better than us on Pisa?

John  07:34

Well, if you look at those Eastern countries, one of the things that we don't have is they have this notion of social motivation. That gives going to school for pride of family and pride of of their country. What do you expect as a dictatorship? And so when they get selected for Pisa, you are esteemed.  I'm sure here in Australia, if you get selected for Pisa, you got another task you have to do. 

Loretta  07:59

There'd be groans. 

John  08:00

Yeah, exactly. That's part of the problem is their motivation is different. They pay an enormous price for that. And I'm not prepared to pay that price. Like if you look at equity, if you look at human development, if you look at building of the concept of self, and character, and you put all that in the equation, and your basket of goods, those countries start to slip down quite dramatically. So we got to be really careful here that we don't just look at PISA as the one I would also then look at a different question and say, Why is Australia going backwards? And my argument is that it's because we have too many cruising kids and cruising schools, kids that start above average, but we don't have sufficient gain on. We're actually very good here in Australia, with kids who start below average. But that's often not recognized, because there's more money and arguing that we're doing a bad job than there is arguing that we're doing a good job. So I think that whole PISA thing is fascinating, and something we need to get right. But the other part of it, and I'm sure we'll come back to this quite often as we talk about professional learning. Those countries like Singapore is a classic example. Their whole system is based on teacher expertise, ours is based on experience. Nothing wrong with experience, Loretta, look at us. Of course, we value experience, don't we?  But after five years of being in teaching, the correlation between expertise and experience is zero. Doesn't mean of course that experienced people can't be expert. That's not what zero means. But our promotion, jobs, careers, it's just the number of years of service. And that's one of the reasons why we're going to struggle over the next few years to get people join our profession. Because they want to join a profession with this expertise, like the average age of coming into teaching in Australia at the moment already 26. The average age of first registering to be a teacher in Queensland is 32. It's a second or third profession. I don't want to come into a profession that's lonely where you have to do it by yourself that you get rewarded by the number of years. And so I think that's a really powerful difference between many of those countries and our country? So let's correct something from before. I'm not saying that all kids are the same. I'm saying what works best with all kids is the same.

Loretta  10:12

Okay. So then how do principals build that expertise in this staff?

John  10:22

Well, it requires courage. It requires courage to, to reliably identify those teachers who are having the greatest impact, forming a coalition of success around them, and inviting the others to join. The biggest problem in our profession is the lack of courage. It's so much easier to take the most senior people and say, that's the expert team.  It's so much easier to have discussions about curriculum, about assessment, about kids than it is to have about the impact of your teaching. And so that I think is the biggest issue. But let me be very clear, what keeps me going at it is I go into schools, and I see incredible courage of leaders doing this, doing a great job. I think the other issue we have in our business is that we're very good at finding problems and fixing them, we aren't very good at finding success and scaling it up. We tend to say Loretta, if you're successful is because of what you did yourself. We don't know how to use the Lorettas of the world to have their thinking come alive, in the staff room and across the school, have her sense of expectations, or what kids can actually do and achieve come alive at across the school. Sometimes that's threatening, sometimes that's too hard. Sometimes that's too challenging. So when it works, it's stunning. And there are plenty of cases in Australia where it's working. And it's usually related to leadership, courage.

Loretta  11:51

Okay, what does school improvement mean to you? How would you define it?

John  11:58

We have a model, where we ask kids to compulsorily come to school, because we believe as a society that we as educators are better at teaching those students the skills, the knowledge, the learning the dispositions than any other parts. Why doesn't that apply to us, too, we have to be learners, and we have to have learning organizations, and it doesn't stop with the students. It's the same with the teachers. I think we are constantly on the improvement cycle. And I look to my good friend, Vivian Robinson, who said, We got to stop using the Change word. Some teachers, we don't want to change. But everybody can be improved. Whereas the change model too often permits leaders and systems to introduce new models, because they're new models or AI like models. And some teachers who are doing a great job already, quite appropriately, resist, whereas others stand behind those people and don't change their practices which need to change. So I think school improvement is a necessary part, we cannot ask kids to come to school to improve and then say it stops with them.

Loretta  13:06

If you were tasked with the job of running education, so you were the Education Minister, and I can see you smiling there. What's the first thing you do?

John  13:17

Personally, Loretta I have this role as the Chair of the Board of AITSL. So I get to meet the ministers and Director General's around Australia and states and territories and federal and new Federal Minister. When I meet him, he will be my 61st. So what you need to ask me is what can I do in the short time I will be in that role? Look, if I have any one thing I would want to do politically, and as I say, when people ask me what I want to do, as the chair of AITSL, it's simple. I want to reintroduce the word expertise. I want to reintroduce that teacher education amongst teachers, amongst leaders and in systems. We have incredible expertise in this country. And that's what we need to grow and improve. And we've got to stop using all the negatives about schools as a weapon to beat up teachers, to beat up principals. And they do it themselves. Every year we get the survey. Right at the moment, teachers, principals are stressed. Workload is incredible. And then you say, wait a moment. Let's look at the results for Australia. 97% of principals claim they thoroughly enjoy the work. They're doing a great job, and I would recommend it to other people. What that data says to me is principals are incredibly good at coping with stress and with workload. So why don't we turn it on its head now and understand why. There's more negotiation by claiming you're overworked than there is by paying me for doing a good job. But it's not helping our profession. We have some stunning expert principals that are hiding, that have been hidden underneath a whole rhetoric about how bad they are at coping with stress. In the psychlogical literature in the 1980s, we dropped the concept of stress, because the same stress can affect me differently than it affects you, Loretta. It's the coping strategies that I have to deal with a stressor. And you have, that's what differs. And that's what principals in general are pretty damn good at doing, is coping with that stress that you want to take your hats off to him, particularly today. But I've just worried that our constant rhetoric is not about expertise. It's about deficit. It's about negative. It's about experience over expertise.

Loretta  15:33

And how many of those 61 Federal ministers have...

John  15:38

The Federal Minister runs not a single school. I find it kind of amusing that they get blamed for the funding when it's often a state issue about how the funding is distributed. Like all the funding is given to the independent schools, but it's given to the state. So the state's quite reasonably spend their money on building academies, on building infrastructure, so it doesn't go directly to the school. So there's a whole issue in there that makes it harder for a minister to actually get traction. But I've seen some pretty impressive decisions being made over the last nine years I've been in this job. And I've seen some, sometimes missed opportunities. But it's like when I say about a principal, the biggest power a principal has in a school is they can decide the narrative of that school. Same with a federal minister, same with a state minister. And that's what really matters. And some of the state ministers that I've worked with over the last few years, they're absolutely very keen to invest in the notion of expertise. It's an interesting reaction when people fight that and you think, why are they doing it? But they do.

Loretta  16:41

I'm just wondering if that notion of developing expertise or recognizing the expertise in teachers, and then for principals to develop that and promote that further, it's creating a playing field of winners and losers, and then there'll be a group of teachers who are wondering why they're not given the opportunity to shine and, and promote or further promote their own expertise. So how do you deal with that?

John  17:13

Well, firstly, I assume you're not telling me that we don't have one as always, as now.

Loretta  17:24

I would say that principals work very hard at developing everybody. And the teachers who aren't perhaps performing as well, they're working with them on the side and building capacity, expertise, attitudes, and so on. They're not doing that publicly.

John  17:46

I absolutely agree with you. But let me be more specific. Like, I like the model that some countries have adopted that within the first two or three years after becoming a teacher for graduating, you make a decision, you make a decision to become a highly accomplished lead teacher, highly accomplished lead leader or highly accomplished lead specialist, assessment specialist, wellbeing specialist, literacy specialist, etc, then your professional development and promotion is based on how you improve those skills. Like take Australian leadership.  At the moment from being a teacher to being a principal is 22 years. If the average age of starting to be a teacher in Queensland is 32, we're not going to wait 20 years as our current model, and then look around to our senior staff and say, who wants to be a principal? And we know that's not as desired as it was many years ago. But if you start investing in them from the very early days into leadership, and why can't those who want to stay in the classroom, go on to be highly accomplished and lead, and we could work out salary structure, which many states are doing at the moment across those things. So my point is, this is with every teacher, I want every teacher to be an expert, I take your line that then the whole system is geared to improve in that expertise. But at the moment you take the model that you're suggesting we have at the moment, principals work very hard, and they do with some of those teachers, then the principal leaves and the next principal works very hard. And some of those teachers like, do they have a desire to get better, many of them have a desire to do more of what they're doing, which is the wrong stuff. And it's very, very, very hard to change that in our world. I don't underestimate the excellence that we have that leaders have across the country. But I then ask the other question is why is it that some principals don't take more dramatic steps with some of those people? And the answer to that is, as you said, the kindness of principals, they see good, they see the chance of improvement and everybody in the meantime, there's a lot of kids that are not doing very well.

Loretta  19:51

The other side of that is there are a lot of principals who've been burned by staff who have made come claims to region, to all sorts of people about bullying. And that can really bring a principal down. So how do you overcome that?

John  20:10

Oh, I think that's easy as one state does at the moment. It's interesting that we did this work a few years ago for a federal minister on workplace violence against principals. Your point is exactly the argument we had over again. But at one state, this is what happens. Wherever you're the principal, and you have a bullying incident from a staff member, or from a parent or from a student, you immediately contact the website, the department confidentially, you put in what the situation is, they immediately give you support. The reason principals get terrified to follow it through is if they make one process error. Correct? Correct. So one State Department says, here's the process, you follow this, we will back into the hilt, and they do. And in that particular state, then you do get a lot more of the action followed up and the improvement happening, and less of the I'm scared to do it. I know in another state was horrendous case of the teachers bullying this principal. Horrendous. The teachers really was bullying them. That principal, who I know very well, refused to take it any further, because he knew that he would not get backing from the department, he'd make one mistake, that is unacceptable. So why isn't one start and then our report that we've about our exercise, looking at Workplace bullying, we identify what that state does and good practice. And I hope other states follow that it can be solved, it can be we can come up with ways to support principles, one states do it, why can't the others?

Loretta  21:40

Well, wouldn't that be wonderful? Because I don't think there's any principal, especially experienced principals in the state of Victoria, that have not at one stage or another being in the firing line of disgruntled staff.

John  21:56

Well, isn't it ironic, Loretta, that one state I'm talking about is Victoria. They have a very good system here. Yes, that if you go and use their systems, and you use their website and contact that department that's responsible for supporting principals, we know they do a great job. We've looked at it.

Loretta  22:15

I think John, you need to talk to principals, you really, really do.

John  22:18

We do this, what they did in their their evaluations of the model. Some principals still don't know about it, and don't want to use it because of the terror and or the war stories out there. But my point being is that systems can come up with ways of supporting principals to follow through some of these actions as they should.

Loretta  22:37

Agreed, they should. All right, you've got 100 principals facing you, sitting down looking at you eager for some advice. Where should principals put their time and energy? Given that the job has got a huge technical component. You're constantly dealing with kids, parents, and all sorts of issues. I don't know any principal who really doesn't want to make their school a better place of learning for their kids. So what are the things that principals really need to focus on first?

John  23:20

Well, my argument.... like I've not been a principal of a school, but I've been a dean, Head of School for 20 plus years and four universities. And my basic principle is, it's not about time, it's about priorities. And the best skill you can have in those leadership positions is choosing what not to do. And when I see great principals, they are much more adept at making those priorities clear. Now, as you know, probably better than anyone Loretta schools have, every kid is entitled to one crisis a year, that's two or three a day. And some of those crises, quite frankly, are trivial. But for that student or that parent, it's huge. And so you have to treat them as all serious, and having systems and knowledge in place about how you prioritize and deal with those because that's, that's what disrupts the principal's day, every day, as those kinds of issues that they didn't get up in the morning and plan for. But it's also then creating the time and the space to deal with your other priorities that you have in the school and how you can build the team around you that's focused on the narrative that you want to have. Oh, my gosh, if you want to be you can be incredibly distracted, distracted by the busy work of being a principal, but you look at great principals. They have the same, the same pressures on them to do their busy work. And as those that do all that busy work, but they cope. And they prioritize. And I remember a great survey that the Principals Association did about seven or eight years ago where they asked principals across Australia, here's 100 different things. Do you have the right to do these things or do you not have the right to do these things? And they got massive variability. And every single one of those, the principal had the right to do. So why is it that some principals are very good at prioritizing and others not. And that's fascinating to look at that. And I think some of those principals that are good at prioritizing, they're very good at saying no to things, sometimes not publicly, but they just choose not to do that. Sometimes you get into trouble and you don't do something you're supposed to. But they cope. And that's why I was commenting before, it isn't the workload, because we will have the same time. It's the coping with the workload. And if I'm working with principals, it's building up those coping strategies. Like I use the, I'm very good at using the Tiger Woods coping strategy, when he ducks up a golf shot. He says, I count to five, whilst I'm counting to five, I'm angry, I vent stupid, and five is over. And I go into problem solving. Now venting is not always a good strategy that goes on too long. But how do you build up those coping strategies is what it's about? And like, when I look at that survey results that says 95, 98% of principals in Australia think it's a great job, would recommend it to others. I want to understand how they think and what they're doing, because that's what the talent survey says. It's it's a job that principals thoroughly enjoy doing. So let's look at those coping strategies.

Loretta  26:19

A leaders born or made?

John  26:29

Same question as are bright kids born or made? now we make them. If you don't believe we make, and we're not in the business of education.

Loretta  26:37

I had to ask that. Because when you talk about coping strategies, it's almost as if we've got that predisposition to either be able to cope or not cope. And I guess if we're going to succeed, and survive this job, and, you know, given that, especially our young ones now, we're probably not going to retire till they're 75, they're going to be principals for a hell of a long time. And the job's not really getting easier, you know, given society and, you know, and all the things that are happening. So I have to ask that, because if individuals don't have those coping strategies, then they're not going to survive in the job are they?

John  27:24

Take it from another angle. If you look at what employers are asking for from our graduates of schools today, it's the probably the biggest change in my lifetime from when you and I finished school. Now, they want graduates who can work in teams, who can translate, who can communicate with social sensitivity. When you and I went, if you were bright and smart, the world was your oyster. It didn't matter about your coping strategies. Look, knowledge is becoming so specific, that if you don't have sufficient knowledge, we can fix that. But if you kind of work in teams, and so I go into schools now, and I say, Do I see kids sitting in groups, but working alone? Do I see assessments, particularly high stakes assessments being done by individuals or by groups? Do I see scoring of those tests, or the score of the individual contribution and the group contribution? And sadly, the answer is no to many of those. But that's the key of what we want in our kids. Now come to your question. That's the key of successful principals, is to have that social sensitivity to know how you're thinking, Loretta, how  a student is thinking, and they have that skill of listening, and demonstrating they've listened before they rush to an answer. And when I see great principals, I see those coping strategies, I see those collective strategies, I see them working very well. You know principals who are the opposite of that. They come in as the dominant big dog, and they dictate on the score. And you know what happens. There's a riot. Whereas if you have those.....were asking that of our principals today, but we're not doing it in our staff rooms, necessarily, and particularly not doing it in our classrooms. And I look at great principals, and I see incredible social sensitivity. I see a lot of steel, but I see that ability to listen, I see that ability to get other people to do the work and to contribute to the work. And I just think that why is that not right through the school system, that old model of the dominant dog, the chainsaw leader is gone. And so I think that the leaders, great leaders today are ahead of the game, and I'd love to see that mirrored in the classroom.

Loretta  29:38

Okay, so what does the future hold for John Hattie?

John  29:45

Well, I've retired from my university job. I'm thoroughly enjoying what I'm doing now. I've really enjoy the political side of working with AITSL I'm not sure that can go on forever. I've done it 7, 8, 9 years now. So I think time is probably coming up, but I thoroughly enjoy that policy space. I'm still gonna keep doing research. We've set up a family foundation to give back and working in schools around the world. I'm still, as I was, when I was a three year old, I'm still curious, I still want to know what's going on. And I have the same hunch, Loretta, you're going to be in the same position very soon as you think about retirement is that you have much more freedoms and luxuries to be curious about things. And so it's a wonderful world. I've also got five, almost six grandkids. So that also keeps me thoroughly busy and keeps reminding me why we're in this space.

Loretta  30:39

Certainly does, John, and I think back to the many conferences and you know, all the times that I've, I've heard you speak, have watched your webinars, and with great interest, and you're very provocative, and you're very challenging. And that's what I like about you, and I think that mirrors that comment that you made at the very start, that you don't necessarily, you know, fit into that stereotype that was expected in your early days as an academic. So I think that stood in great stead for you. And I think it's helped mould you.

John  31:20

I get worried when I hear provocative, I actually believe what I say. One interpretation of provocateur is I'm just saying it to get a reaction. I'm not. And I'd also like not only do I believe what I say, I think I've got a reasonably large corpus of evidence about what I say and and I want to be the first one to say I'm wrong, and follow that up. And so I hear the word provocative, and it makes me cringe because I don't want to be seen as provocative. I want to be seen as curious. I want to be seen as hopefully leading people to ask the right questions. I want to hear and see an action. I like, the one big thing coming out of our work over the last few years is it's not what teachers do, and what leaders do that matters. It's how they think about what they do. And so I'm intrigued. Like one of my challenges to you, Loretta, and anyone in this session today is why is it that I think 1943 I found a book written by a principal about their life as a principal.  John Marsden, who owns and runs two schools here in Melbourne wrote a book last year taking risks about his experience of running a school. How come in this literature, we've got 100,000 books written by people like me about how you should be a leader. But we've actually got nothing about what it means to be a leader. I encourage you to write an experience of beinga leader, warts and all, the good side, the bad side. I'm absolutely confident that the bottom line is it's a thoroughly enjoyable job. But if you knew what I had to deal with, wow.  Why isn't that coming out? So my challenge to all of you, write up your experience, don't wait for us academics to do it. Tell us what it really means to be a principal. That would be an exciting way to hear you think aloud. 

Loretta  33:04

See, you've just provoked thinking. And curiosity. There you go. 10 out of 10. John, thank you very much for your time, your your insights and your thoughts, your beliefs, your passion. It's all come through. We're very appreciative of that. Thanks, John. 

John  33:25

Thank you, Loretta. 

Loretta  33:27

Thanks for listening to this latest episode of talking out of school, where we cover topics and dilemmas associated with the ups and downs and even the downright curious of the school leaders' job. Want to know more? Then visit me at shaping leaders.com.au But for now, here's to staying ahead of the game.