Transformation is significant, systematic and sustained change that secures success for all students in all settings. Achieving change on this scale is an imperative for schools and school systems around the world. ‘Success for all students in all settings’ demands a high level of personalisation in learning. A paradox is that there is a growing body of evidence that personalising learning can be energised and sustained by networking professional knowledge on a global scale. Moreover, change on the scale of transformation cannot be achieved if the time horizon is limited to the traditional frameworks for annual and school improvement planning. A futures focus is required.

The purpose of this paper is to address the paradox and provide readers with two sets of indicators that will guide the selection of strategies for transformation. Each arises from breakthroughs in work undertaken by Melbourne-based Educational Transformations over the last five years. The key themes were addressed in the author’s keynote presentations at the 2nd iNet International Conference for Transformation and Innovation held in Mauritius in June 2009 hosted by the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust through its iNet project.

The limitations of traditional approaches

Schools typically engage in several approaches to planning and these normally assume a continuation of the current approach to schooling. It is rare for the time horizon to extend beyond three years. The following is a simple typology:

• annual planning – to plan for the year ahead
• school improvement planning – to achieve improvement in preferred outcomes in the prevailing approach to schooling
• school development planning – to build capacity to achieve improvement;
• strategic planning – to determine the major strategies to reach a preferred outcome over several years.

The case for a more future-oriented approach to planning acknowledges the rapidly changing context and the possibility of transformation in prevailing approaches to schooling. Futures focused planning is operationally defined as the process of determining:

• what shall be done, when it shall be done, by whom it shall be done, in what sequence, through which process, and with what resources in an environment in which the forces shaping society and education are constantly, rapidly and often unexpectedly changing
• there are alternatives to securing success which may involve major change to prevailing approaches to schooling,
• thus calling for resilience, agility, creativity, imagination and courage by those involved in the process.

There are different ways schools can engage in futures focused planning. One is scenario planning, a process that seeks to describe alternative futures, either probable or preferred, and create a narrative that credibly explains the pathways from the present to each of these futures.

The Futures Focused School project

An important breakthrough was achieved in the Futures Focused School project commissioned by Teaching Australia – the Australian Institute for Quality Teaching and School Leadership – and conducted in 2008 and 2009 by Brian Caldwell and David Loader for Educational Transformations. The centre-piece was a series of two-day workshops held in every state and territory – 18 in total – with 510 leaders from 211 schools taking part. Teaching Australia recognised the context described above and had earlier conducted the Open Book Scenarios project in 2006 and 2007 that led to the formulation of four scenarios for society and schools to 2030 published as Teaching for Uncertain Futures (Teaching Australia, 2008).

The workshop experience was rated by participants on 15 indicators, with mean ratings across the country exceeding 4 on a 5 point scale on all items. Participants received a package of materials that included Teaching for Uncertain Futures, summaries of key ideas, templates to guide futures focused planning, and two DVD’s containing four hours of filmed interviews with experts on the topic, including leaders in schools that model the approach. Participants sampled the templates and left the event with key elements of plans to be developed on return to their schools. Teaching Australia made it possible for all of the more than 9,500 schools in Australia and elsewhere around the world to do the same. The entire workshop package, including all films, can be downloaded at www.teachingaustralia.edu.au. What follows is drawn from the package, including excerpts from interviews with experts.

Key idea 1: Seeing and sensing

What are the key ideas that emerged in the project? The first dispelled the notion that schools that position themselves for sustainable success are pre-occupied with the future. Instead, they are concerned in equal measure with past, present and future (Caldwell & Loader, 2009, drawing in part on insights in Beare, 2001; Caldwell & Harris, 2008; Davies, 2006; Loader, 2007 and Mintzberg, 1995). Vision takes on a new meaning if the metaphor of ‘seeing’ is adopted.

A futures focused school ‘sees ahead’, but it also ‘sees behind’, honouring and extending its accomplishments in the past. It ‘sees above’ in the sense of understanding the policy context. It ‘sees below’, demonstrating a deep understanding of the needs, interests, motivations and aspirations of students and staff. It ‘sees beside’ by networking professional knowledge to take account of best practice in other schools in similar settings. It ‘sees beyond’ by seeking out best practice in other nations and in fields other than education. It is consistent and persistent; it ‘sees it through’.

The metaphor of ‘sensing’ is also helpful given that ‘seeing’ refers to what is already in place or is projected. A futures focused school is alert to signals in its internal and external environment that may influence what may occur in the future and that may subsequently be ‘seen’. These signals may be strong or weak and a high level of sensitivity is required to distinguish among them. The imagery of ‘seeing’ and ‘sensing’ was captured in the logo of the project, with the  shape of an eye and directions for movement that imply simultaneous engagement with past, present and future.

Key idea 2: No one best way

The second idea was powerfully evident in the work of three exemplary schools that shared their experiences during the project: there is no one best way to be futures focused. Three schools were profiled, one from each sector and from three different states. Each was nominated by experts on the steering committee for the project for their success as futures focused schools. Brief descriptions of the different approaches are set out below along with short excerpts of interviews with principals that now form part of the online resource package (Teaching Australia, 2009).

Bethany Catholic Primary School is located in Werribee North, a rapidly expanding community south-west of Melbourne and now virtually a suburb of the capital. It was opened in 1995 with an enrolment of 160, initially on a temporary site in demountable accommodation. It was established on its permanent site in 1997 and its current enrolment is more than 600. Bethany is part of the system of schools administered by the Catholic Education Office, Archdiocese of Melbourne. The school serves a community with moderate to high socio-economic disadvantage. In 2009 its SES score as a non-government school was 96, with the highest in Victoria being 128 (least disadvantaged) and the lowest being 81 (most disadvantaged). It is noteworthy that the school performs above ‘like schools’ in state-wide tests in literacy and numeracy.

A feature of the school is a ‘leadership centre’ that is equipped with resources enabling students to develop the skills considered vital for success in the 21st Century. The design allows for individual difference in learning styles and provides furniture and equipment which supports quality collaboration as well as independent work. ICT resources provide students with interactive whiteboards, graphics tablets, laptops with wireless network access, and desktop computers. The centre accommodates 180 students at any one time. They have access to 21 laptops, 19 computer workstations, four portable DVD players, three hard drive video cameras and four digital cameras. A visit reveals a high level of purposeful activity among students who learn in a variety of modes, including small classes in teacher directed learning, team work on particular projects, and individual activity. The centre was officially opened by deputy prime minister Julia Gillard, who is also federal minister for education, and is visited by hundreds of educators from around the nation who are attracted by its futures focus and levels of student achievement that belie its challenging circumstances.

Bethany has attributes that meet requirements for sustainable success. The vision for what is now evident has been shaped in systematic fashion over more than a decade. Large numbers of staff hold leadership positions. It searches the world to select its strategies; in 2009 alone eight of its leaders visited countries on three continents. Marlene Monahan has been principal since the school was established. She explains the approach:

We get our ideas from reading; we get our ideas from inter­acting, particularly with other organisations that see them­selves as being successful organisations, because where people see them­selves as being successful, we want to know what the ingredients are that bring about their success, and what part of their story might enable us to transform and improve and become better. The sort of organisation that you want to set up has to be one that’s ever-changing.
(reported in Teaching Australia, 2009).

MLC Sydney is a non-government girls’ school located 11 kilometres west of the Sydney CBD. In 2008, 1,215 girls were enrolled in a junior school (kindergarten to year 5), middle school (years 6, 7 and 8) and senior school (years 9 to 12). MLC has a strong tradition, drawing on its history of 120 years of preparing young women for their adult lives. While staff and students are proud of their heritage, they are not bound by the traditional structures of learning. Rather, they are encouraged to challenge traditional structures of schooling and to develop new arrangements that are better suited to prepare their students for working in the 21st Century.

The leadership team routinely evaluates progress in achieving strategic goals set every three years. Those adopted in 2008 derive from views that seamless technology will change the way the school operates, learning will be more tailored to individual needs, schools will become centres of the community, and international citizenship will become essential.

However, the school also adopts a longer term perspective as it plans 15 to 20 years in the future. It was a leader in the technological revolution, having planned well more than a decade ago. It now seeks to ensure that its students will be globally responsible citizens. While incremental year-to-year planning is important, the school recognises that it must be ‘bold’ if its success is to be sustained. Principal Barbara Stone explains:

A futures-focussed school is a school that looks at where it wants to be, and then works out how it’s going to get there. So it’s a school where there’s a strong view of what students will need when they leave school, rather than what students need simply at this particular point in time, and then puts together a process that allows you to move from one to the other  . . . so you need to be out­ward-looking . . .you’ve got to be bold in terms of the future that you see, because unless you have a really big reason to change, people won’t want to make that change, and they won’t come with you when they do it.
(reported in Teaching Australia, 2009).

While MLC is a private school serving students from relatively advantaged settings, the approaches described here could be adopted in any setting. For a school that achieves improvement in the short to medium term, but against the odds in a disadvantaged setting, the key to sustainable success is to also be futures focused.

Robina State High School is a government secondary school in Queensland with about 2,600 students from grade 8 to grade 12. Located in a rapidly growing area on the Gold Coast, this school exemplifies the concept of ‘think global, act local’. The school has a capacity to identify and utilise the strengths of the local community in order to provide students with high quality, personalised educational opportunities. The futures focused philosophy of the school is founded on the concepts of flexibility and responsiveness to the current needs of the school community, while looking towards and planning for a range of possible futures.

The school has a strong relationship with its local community but it also has a strong international focus as it aims to prepare students for living in an increasingly multi-cultural globalised world. It regularly hosts long term and short term visits by international students and teachers. In 2008, for example, the school welcomed more than 50 students from about 15 countries and the largest cohort of Japanese students ever hosted by one school in Queensland. Teachers and other staff relentlessly plan these international visits, particularly short term study tours, to ensure that they not only increase students’ cultural understandings but also enhance student learning through relevant curriculum planning.

The key word at Robina is ‘responsiveness’. It is perhaps understandable that the limitations of traditional approaches to lengthy strategic plans are acknowledged by its principal Ross Smith:

I’m always amused about paper­work in regards to strategic planning; I mean, I read lots of work on strategic planning, and a lot of it’s about defining deliverables – it’s a whole lot of ‘edu-speak’ around strategic planning. But the more paper­work we do – and we can do it easily; it’s not a problem to us – the more I find that it’s not managing responsiveness very well. So the longer the term you do your planning for, the less accurate it is.
(reported in Teaching Australia, 2009).

The three exemplars described above offer contrasting approaches to futures focused planning. Bethany is a primary school in challenging socio-economic circumstances, but it has consistently pursued a long term vision that ensures it performs well on state-wide tests of literacy and numeracy at the same time it created a state-of-the-art leadership centre that addresses a broader range of learning outcomes using a mix of pedagogies that are well suited to the 21st century. It networks widely around the world to find the best ideas to guide its planning. MLC may well be a private school in favourable socio-economic circumstances but it recognises that it must be constantly moving forward with big and bold ideas shaped by a vision of success for its students as global citizens. Robina is a state secondary school that draws its students from a wide range of socio-economic settings. It epitomises the ‘resilience, agility, creativity, imagination and courage’ element in the operational definition of a futures focused school. While it can produce strategic plans without difficulty, it favours responsiveness over lengthy lock-step approaches.

Insights from the experts

Insights from experts were invaluable in the Futures Focused School project. The following are excerpts from interviews that now form part of the online resource package (Teaching Australia, 2009). For example, Rufus Black, former principal and partner of McKinsey & Company (Australia) stressed the importance of courage and trust as schools respond to changes in the economy and society. Futures focused schools:

. . . are courageous because they’re prepared to try models that may or may not work. They have courageous parents who support them to enable those sorts of experiments to happen. They’re imaginative places, because they’re prepared to really draw on different kinds of ideas to think about how we learn differently, and how we organise the learning differently. They’re trusting places, where those who lead the school trust those who are playing with the experiments; and that those who are in the school, who may not be as future focussed, trust leader­ship to do some crazy things. And they have governance that’s trusting and imaginative and open; and the gover­nance matters a lot, in terms of creating the right environment for future focussed schools to happen.
(reported in Teaching Australia, 2009).

Tony Mackay, deputy chair of the Australian Curriculum Reporting and Assessment Agency (ACARA) and chair of the Innovation Unit in the UK highlighted the importance of innovation and the search for ‘next practice’. He contends that innovation must be ‘the defining, driving force’ in schooling. Innovation is a feature of a system that:

 . . . is always attempting to improve, but doing so from a ‘best practice’ platform. In other words, you try and take the best know­ledge, and you try and replicate that, and you hope that with appropriate research and development, you’re able to feel more confident about what works; and then after establishing that, you move to scale up. (reported in Teaching Australia, 2009).

Mackay proposes different time frames in futures focused planning.

[Part of the conversation is] about a time­frame which is right now, in the next 12 months or the next term of the govern­ment. I think actually the innovation time­frame, the ‘next practice’ time­frame, has got to be three to five years. [We have] been talking about the future of schooling – well that’s actually a 10, 15, 20 year time­frame. So I think we should have in our heads what it is that we really want to achieve in terms of a learning society, where every young person is given the opportunity to be able to acquire the skills and knowledge to thrive and survive.
(reported in Teaching Australia, 2009).

Erica McWilliam, professor of education at the National Institute of Education in Singapore, referred to the importance of ‘creative capacity building’ as schools support their students who will, in the future, help solve what at present are considered to be ‘intractable problems’.

I think that in the 20th century, we got very good at teaching routine habits of thinking and routine ways of working, to solve routine problems. In the 21st century, a lot of the routine problems have been solved. What we’ve left for young people are the in­tractable problems – problems of water quality, problems of climate change, shantytowns, AIDS, and so on. We have left really tough problems of the sort that require some­thing else other than routine thinking and routine solutions . . . To me, creative capacity building will be the funda­mental core business of schools in the 21st century.
(reported in Teaching Australia, 2009).

Indicators of a successful futures focused school

An outcome of the work described above was the specification of 10 indicators of a successful futures focused (Caldwell & Loader, 2009). These are included in Table 1 along with 10 indicators of personalising learning that emerged from a second project as described below.

International Project to Frame the Transformation of Schools

A second breakthrough was achieved in the International Project to Frame the Transformation of Schools conducted in 2007, the purpose of which was to explore how schools that had been transformed or had sustained high performance had built strength in each of four kinds of capital and aligned them through effective governance to secure success for their students.

Intellectual capital refers to the level of knowledge and skill of those who work in or for the school. Social capital refers to the strength of formal and informal partnerships and networks involving the school and all individuals, agencies, organisations and institutions that have the potential to support and be supported by the school. Spiritual capital refers to the strength of moral purpose and the degree of coherence among values, beliefs and attitudes about life and learning (for some schools, spiritual capital has a foundation in religion; in other schools, spiritual capital may refer to ethics and values shared by members of the school and its community). Financial capital refers to the money available to support the school. Governance is the process through which the school builds its intellectual, social, financial and spiritual capital and aligns them to achieve its goals.

The forms of capital described above were adapted from earlier work carried out from 2004 to 2007 as reported by Caldwell (2006) and Caldwell & Spinks (2008). Much of the developmental work was carried out in more than 70 seminars and workshops involving about 4,000 school and school system leaders from 11 countries. An interactive technology resulted in the generation of more than 10,000 responses on strategies for change and issues of concern as schools set out on a path to transformation.

There were two stages in the project. The first called for a review of literature on the four kinds of capital and how they are aligned through effective governance. An outcome of this review was the identification of 10 indicators for each form of capital and for governance. The second called for case studies in five secondary schools in each of six countries: Australia, China, England, Finland, United States and Wales (the Australian component also included a primary school and a network of primary and secondary schools). The project was carried out by Educational Transformations with different components conducted by international partners with funding from the Australian Government and the Welsh Assembly Government.

The findings of the project including the indicators described above are contained in Why not the Best Schools (Caldwell & Harris, 2008). The project was extended in 2008 to formulate 10 more indicators for personalising learning.

Personalising learning in the futures focused school

There is a variation of the theme ‘think global – act local’ if the 10 indicators of a futures focused school that emerged in the Futures Focused Schools project are combined with the 10 indicators of personalising learning that were identified in the extension to the International Project to Frame the Transformation of Schools. The two sets of indicators are contained in Table 1 below.

Indicators of a futures focus

Indicators of personalising learning

The school has clearly defined values and beliefs about life and learning that are used to balance past, present and future in the formulation of its plans There is a capacity and willingness for staff and other stakeholders to keep abreast of trends and issues, threats and opportunities in the wider environment, nationally and internationally There is a capacity and willingness for staff to respond to threats and opportunities anticipating their impact on education generally and on the school in particular  There are structures and processes which enable the school to gather evidence and other intelligence, set priorities and formulate strategies which take account of likely and / or preferred futures School leaders ensure that the attention of the school’s community is focused on matters of strategic importance, sharing their knowledge about these matters with the school’s community, and encouraging other leaders to do the same in their areas of interest The school has an ongoing structured review process that facilitates the monitoring of the implementation of strategies as well as emerging strategic issues in the wider environment The school strategically positions itself for enduring success by skilfully balancing strategies that have succeeded over time with new strategies that take account of changing circumstances Ongoing informal conversations about future possibilities are encouraged as much as the more formal processes of strategic planning The school invests in innovation so that it becomes an ‘incubator’ of new ideas and new practices There is recognition that convergence of ideas is not always possible or even desirable, but every effort is made to develop a shared understanding of what is important to create and sustain success

The circumstances, needs, interests and aspirations of every student are known to each of the student’s teachers There is an assessment system in place that provides a picture at any moment in time of each student’s progress against targets and expectations There is a system in place that ensures that each student who falls behind against targets and expectations is given immediate support to catch up There is a written learning plan for each student that can be made available to all on a right-to-know basis including the student and parents Each student knows and understands in an age appropriate way his or her learning plan Each student has at least one person who has knowledge of the student’s educational and personal needs, learning plans and progress, and can provide or access and then deliver support immediately it is required Each student knows that he or she is supported and cared for by the school Each students knows how to access support and care whenever he or she requires The parent knows about the learning plan and progress of his or her child and is kept informed of necessary care and support whenever they are required and provided Each students knows, understands and practices the values and behaviours that are expected of all students in the school and more broadly in society

Table 1: Indicator for personalising learning in the futures focused school

Implications for school leaders

There are important implications for school leaders in addressing the two sets of indicators in Table 1. Some are derived from the importance of ‘seeing’ and ‘sensing’ in the futures focused school described earlier in the paper. These may be expressed as follows:

1. The school leader ‘sees ahead’, but also ‘sees behind’, honouring and extending accomplishments in the past.
2. The school leader ‘sees above’ in the sense of understanding the policy context.
3. The school leader ‘sees below’ by demonstrating a deep understanding of the needs, interests, motivations and aspirations of students and staff.
4. The school leader ‘sees beside’ by networking professional knowledge to take account of best practice in other schools in similar settings.
5. The school leader ‘sees beyond’ by seeking out best practice in other nations and in fields other than education.

The fourth and fifth of these call for networking locally, nationally and internationally, as illustrated in the three studies of schools in the Futures Focused School project (Bethany, MLC Sydney, Robina). The Charter for Action that was agreed at the 2nd iNet International Conference for Transformation and Innovation in Mauritius in June 2009 (SSAT-iNet, 2009 available at www.ssat-inet.net) included a commitment by school leaders to networking:

As a leader in a globalised world I agree to reflect the following in my work and to recommend to my colleagues around the world that they do the same:

1. To engage in global collaborations to transform schools and network knowledge in every way possible, with trust that comes through a commitment to a common cause and with the highest levels of professionalism and respect for the circumstances of others
2. To participate in and contribute to networks at different levels – local, national and international –  according to circumstance and opportunity.

The findings in the two projects reported in this paper illustrate how complex but exciting such networking can be. It connects past, present and future with a global reach at the same time that it achieves the personalising of learning at the local level. This is the challenge of leadership for transformation in the 21st century.

References

Beare, H (2001). Creating the future school. London: Routledge.

Caldwell, BJ (2006). Re-imagining educational leadership. Melbourne: ACER Press and London: Sage.

Caldwell, BJ & Harris, J (2008). Why not the best schools? Melbourne: ACER Press.

Caldwell, B & Loader, D (2009). ‘What is a Futures Focused School?’ Special materials in the workshop program on The Futures Focused School, a project of Teaching Australia and Educational Transformations. Brighton VIC: Educational Transformations. The entire workshop package including four hours of interviews with experts is available for free download at: www.teachingaustralia.edu.au

Caldwell, BJ & Spinks, JM (2008). Raising the stakes. London: Routledge.

Davies, B (2006). Leading the strategically focused school. London: Paul Chapman Publishing.

Loader, D (2007). Jousting for the new generation. Melbourne: ACER Press.

Mintzberg, H (1995). Strategic thinking as ‘seeing’. In Garratt, B. (Ed.) Developing strategic thought: rediscovering the art of direction-giving. London: McGraw-Hill. Chapter 5.

SSAT-iNet (2009). Charter for Action. Agreed by school leaders at the 2nd iNet International conference for Transformation and Innovation hosted by the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust (SSAT) through its project in International Networking for Educational Transformation (iNet). Mauritius, June. Available for free download at: www.ssat-inet.net).

Teaching Australia (2007). Teaching for Uncertain Futures. Action ACT: Teaching Australia. Available for free download from: www.teachingaustralia.edu.au.

Teaching Australia (2009). The Futures focused school. Program Resources. Available for free download from: www.teachingaustralia.edu.au.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Professor Brian J. Caldwell is Managing Director, Educational Transformations Pty Ltd (Melbourne) and Associate Director, International Networking for Educational Transformation (iNet) (Global) Specialist Schools and Academies Trust (London). Professor Caldwell’s current major project is Futures Focused School Project (Teaching Australia). His most recent book, Why not the best schools?, was co-authored with Jessica Harris (ACER Press).

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