Thinking Schools - Leading your community

In this section we put forward as a key element in a definition of a ‘thinking school’ is its ability to lead its community. We conclude that community leadership can act as an appropriate initial stimulus to begin the journey of becoming a ‘thinking school’.

Analysis of the interviews with the heads undertaking the study revealed three common themes worthy of investigation. Firstly they all expressed the view that education was more than academic study – it was about personalised learning. One head spoke of their deeply held belief that many children deemed failures within the education system were in fact good learners who could use academic skills to great effect in their personal lives. As a consequence schools may be increasingly failing children by being unable to engage learners with the curriculum and teaching they value. Another argued that for children to succeed different forms of personal engagement in learning were required.

Secondly, all the heads were concerned with the self-image of children. In particular, the notion that education must be concerned with building resilience within children to enable them to succeed in a rapidly changing world. This included ideas that children would need to learn, unlearn and relearn concepts, skills and knowledge throughout their life. Thus making mistakes should be recognized as external to the image of the self. Education should boost the self-image of learners and seek to minimise personal feelings of failure.

Finally, all the heads referred to the importance of teaching techniques that involved a great deal of negotiation and discussion with learners. The outcome such negotiations should be that the curriculum is no longer the possession of teachers to hand down to learners, but a communal task of effort where the teacher acts as model learner.

Each head believed they were to some extent ‘out of step’ with current National Curriculum guidance. In answer to the following question: ‘Do you feel you are doing something different to the centralized reform agenda?’ there was almost universally agreement in the responses of those interviewed. That each school was attempting a path ‘less trod’ shone through the data and reflected that each school was trying to achieve something they saw as specific to their own and their communities needs. Interestingly, some respondents thought that the centralized reform agenda was moving closer to their own view of education, but were not entirely confident in this.

Each head believed that their internal school culture was an influence on the culture of the wider community. The key to this interaction was seen as the ability of the school to clearly communicate why their children ‘needed’ the innovations that were taking place to both parents and pupils. This suggests that a key component in defining a ‘thinking school’ is a commitment to take actions to involve the community in seeking to improve the future life chances of its children. This commitment involves communicating to the community why the school feels such innovations are important. Although it is too strong to say these schools are enriching their communities, they are striving to involve their communities in agreed paths to improvement.

The Community of Enquiry

Fisher (1998) seeks to define ‘community’ as a principle of action. It is more than a group of parents, pupils and teaching staff. A true community is a way of life that:

• embodies as a principle the freedom of expression of individuals

• makes critical reasoning not convention the arbiter of moral judgement

• is organic in the sense that its working procedures and values are open to adaptation

• is democratic in ensuring that all its members have a right to a voice and a vote.

(Fisher 1998 p59)

For Fisher community is central to thinking as it is through community, as a principle of action, that problems are resolved. This definition of community does not differentiate between the school and its constituency as, for Fisher, there is no limit to group size when creating a mandate for action.

''Teaching thinking is not only about creating a community of enquiry in the classroom. There is a ‘community of enquiry’ internal to the school and one which embraces the broader community that the school serves. Discussion is key to the process of creating a community. The kind of discussion in question is oral debate that ‘requires speakers to put themselves in another’s place in order to know how to communicate information so as to be comprehensible to others’ (Fisher 1998).

Many schools do not ask parents to put themselves in its position, let alone offer an opportunity to take the role of speaker for the institution. Fisher argues that a community is a ‘rational structure for maximizing effective thinking and a moral structure of mutual respect and shared democratic values’ (Fisher 1998). Drawing upon Vygotsky he argues that our intellectual range can always be extended through the mediation of and interaction with others, by the social distribution of intelligence. This not only has implications for classroom practice, but also to the way schools are managed and the wider community is made part of the consultative and problem solving process.