The power of networking: a Chilean perspective

The arguments in favor of school networking are well known. Research experiments conducted on our smart cousins, lab rats, have shown that the brains of even well-kept animals living in isolation do not develop as well as those of their peers who enjoy company. The gap is even more striking when comparing them to rats who have both companions and toys to play with. Well, in education the toys are the good ideas and practices and the playmates are our colleagues.

World-class academics such as B. Caldwell, D. Hargreaves, A. Harris,  D. Bentley, R. Elmore,  R. Putnam, and many others, have put forward compelling arguments in support of networking and its twin concepts of professional learning communities, networked learning communities, and so on, such as:

• the importance of social capital and emotional intelligence in the learning process  
• the complexity and acceleration of adaptive challenges, which call for innovative answers mobilising the power of many different brains (rather than just one)
• the contextual fit between networks and the ICT-facilitated knowledge explosion  
• the limitations of exclusively top-down or even bottom-up approaches    
• the impact of the ‘cultural change’ and the ‘new teacher professionalism’ research literature
• the felt urge to progress from a relatively static ‘effective school’ approach to the dynamics of school improvement and transformation. 

The reality of the school networking experience in Chile has lagged behind the theory.  We have just re-processed over 2000 evaluations of participants in our much acclaimed Leadership Festival (2005-2007); leadership being, of course, of the distributed and learning-centred type. In the ‘Other comment/recommendations’ section of the questionnaires, the overwhelming message after most events was an enthusiastic ‘We need more of this type of capacity-development activity!’. If this is the perception, what should we do differently to pick up the epidemic-like pace at which iNet Chile grew in its first year?

Our colleague, Alex Castillo Padilla, Executive Pedagogical Coordinator of the eight-school-strong Dagoberto Godoy network, which successfully serves children in challenging circumstances, analyses the situation as follows. Leaving aside the incentive structure and vertical organisation of South American cultures and educational systems – which, granted, are no small matters – he finds that the learning path to networking is fraught with risks.

• Networks, he argues, must serve a very clear common purpose; this purpose must be known, and seen as relevant, not only to the leader of the network, but to all its members.

•  If it is perceived as imposed from above, then the effort required to sustain the network is experienced as an extra burden and the new behaviors it calls for do not get embedded in the daily thinking and routine of the teacher-members.

• Ownership is key, so that participants continuously co-construct the purpose and meaning, objectives and operational means of the network.

• The next danger is that networking becomes an end in itself, the pursuit of ‘activities’ tend to dominate the search for results, and the courage to abandon what has not worked and to keep relentlessly looking for what works is lacking.

• Last, and most importantly, it is critical that any evaluation be focused on the impact on students’ learning and not just on how good teachers may feel about networking.

New style leadership, ownership creation, a relentless focus on improving learning results for all children. Given that (i) Chile is still a country at the threshold of OECD, where capacity-building remains a central challenge; and that (ii) a more favorable macro-policy and institutional framework is still under discussion in the Chilean Congress, and will take some time to be passed into law, the challenge for our school leaders in the short run is to determine what is within their power to change in order to create the three pre-conditions for successful networking.  

We know that it can be done because we have had successes, although we are aware that these are baby steps - in terms of depth and sustainability - compared to where we want to get to.  Here are the lessons we have learned over the past three years:

• Focus and coherence. We have been continuously tightening and refining our diagnosis, increasingly focusing it on two broad themes only: ‘leadership for learning’ and ‘pedagogical practices’ – as stepping stones towards personalised learning and other more sophisticated approaches, which are still out of the ‘proximal development zone’ of many of our members. These two were selected because, in today’s context, they hold the key to generating the cultural paradigm shift needed in our schools and classrooms – from isolated autonomy to collaboration, from prescription to informed professionalism, from punctual INSET to continuous professional development, reflection and enquiry, and so on. They now provide the framework for coherence and synergy in our entire proposed program, consisting of courses, learning walks, toolkits, publications, study tours and a website. 

• High quality support. This may seem obvious but lack of time, resources or skills often stands in the way of effective networking. To give just one example, of all the above tools and approaches, our learning walks are one of the most radical departures away  from the prevailing consumer approach towards the production of  knowledge. We have observed the difference that high quality support makes for the learning walks: advance and repeated announcements; a host-school which prepares challenging presentation material and an observation grid that helps participants think out-of-the-box and builds on research evidence; participants who discipline themselves into recording the idea-sharing that took place, so as to maximise their professional learning; ‘expert critical friends’ (iNet or otherwise) who provide quick, accurate, selective and positive feedback and open new ways of looking at a given problem or practice,  helping avoid the feeling of ‘going in circles’ with ‘more of the same’ - a leading killer of networks.

• Effective, cutting-edge communications. Clear, frequent, consistent communications, delivered in a multimedia and multi-format fashion, are critical in the age of the internet and consumer choice. This is especially so in Chile, a non-English speaking country featuring extreme geographical conditions - 4500 kilometres from north to south and 150 to 300 kilometres from east to west, and one-third of the schools classified as rural, which, in this case, does not mean green rolling pastures but a harsh mountain desert. With physical encounters costly to achieve, an agile, user-friendly, ICT-based  virtual learning environment is critical to bringing to the participants continuous stimulation and the sense of belonging, which are a must for effective networking.

• High expectations. Finally, what is true to ensure that vulnerable children learn also holds for networks. While they must respect their members’ diversity and individual freedom, experience shows that some of the rules of the game must be non-negotiable. In particular, the schools that affiliate must be willing to dedicate the necessary time, human and financial resources to make participation worthwhile and to produce the expected results.                

iNet Chile is about to undergo an interesting transition, from supported to unsupported network. Different parts of the above program will be picked up by different, highly respected national specialists or institutions. How they manage to pull the pieces of the puzzle into a single, meaningful and dynamic entity will determine the network’s ability to reap the full benefits of lateral collaboration, as already observed in many iNet countries.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Mr Alex Castillo is a high school teacher and psychologist in Santiago, Chile. He is currently Executive Manager of the seven-school Teniente Dagoberto Godoy network, which successfully serves Chilean children in challenging circumstances. The Dagoberto Godoy network has been an active participant in the iNet Chile network.

Ms Françoise Delannoy is a European educator with 30 years experience in Africa, Asia and South America. An educational change specialist, she has helped develop and implement system-level strategies and projects with an increased focus on the macro-micro interface. From 2004 to 2008 she was Head of iNet Chile.

 

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