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The annual ASPA conference was held in Hobart on 30 September to 3 October. It was organised by the Tasmanian Principals Association and was held as a combined ASPA and APPA conference - the first time that this has occurred for a number of years. About 700 delegates attended the conference.
Click on the Photographs menu item on to the left to go to the gallery of 141 photographs from the conference.
Click here to download the mp3 file of the opening of the conference (26.1Mb mp3 file), or click on the play button of the media player below to listen to the file online (best through amplified speakers).
Please note:
1. The audio recordings below (the mp3 files) can be downloaded to your hard drive for listening offline later. Right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac) on the linked text and select "save target as" to save these documents to your computer. They are very large files. You will be able to listen to them online as soon as the links are added to the material below.
2. The list of sessions and the links to the associated presentation files and audio recordings is not yet complete. Please check back here from time to time during the next couple of weeks.
3. A photo gallery from the conference will be added here over the next couple of weeks.
The program consisted of several types of sessions.
Addresses:
David Bartlett, Minister for Education.
Keynote Addresses:
Bill Mulford & Steven Jacobson - Successful Principalship of High-Performance Schools in High Poverty Communities - presentation (10.2 Mb pdf file), audio recording (37.7Mb mp3 file), session notes.
Allana Corbin - She told her inspirational story of survival and overcoming adversity and disability - session notes only.
Dennis Littky - He and his colleagues told the story of the Big Picture Story and how it works for students - session notes only.
Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli - Adolescent Sexualisation: Results from her Research - presentation (2.57Mb pdf file), audio recording (27.6Mb pdf file), session notes.
International Panel - Issues of National Testing in Canada, England, and Canada - audio recording (27.0Mb mp3 file), session notes.
Successful School Principalship in Late-Career - Bill Edmunds & Bill Mulford - presentation (1.91Mb pdf file).
Building a Professional Learning
Inquiry Community in the Context of Learner Wellbeing and the Professional Standards for Teachers - Marion Mayes - presentation (1.92Mb pdf file) audio recording (21.2Mb mp3 file).
Knowledge is Power - Know Your Parliament - Chris Reid - presentation (907Kb pdf file).
DEEP Thinking: A Framework for Critically Evaluating Pedagogical Practice? - Daniel White - presentation (2.05Mb pdf file).
School Leader Preparation in Finland - Cathy Pianta, the winner of the 2006 MSP/ASPA Research fellowship.
Leading with Leverage - Greg Morgan & Lucy McCarthy - presentation (2.92Mb ppt file).
Dare To Lead: 4 years on; what have we learnt? - Brian Giles-Browne - presentation (1.57Mb pdf file).
Batten down the Hatches: Charting a Successful Transition from Junior to Middle or Senior Schools amidst the Roaring Change of Teens, "Tweens" and Emerging Adolescence - Ian Price - presentation (1.78Mb pdf file).
The Development of a Personal Leadership Framework through Reflective Practice - Paul Dillon - presentation (2.52Mb pdf file).
School Improvement: The Lean, Mean and Smart Way - Susan O'Donnell - presentation (1.52Mb pdf file).
Leaders Learning: A Journey, Not a Destination - Wendy House & Virginia Gill - presentation (7.03Mb pdf file).
Successful Principalship in Small Schools - John Ewington & Bill Mulford - presentation (111Kb pdf file).
Innovative Leadership in Developing Strong Teams in the School and Community to Promote Positive Imbedded Change - Jan Matthews- presentation (2.12Mb pdf file), audio recording (28.9Mb mp3 file).
Educational Leadership for Possible, Probable and Preferred Futures - Liz Veel & Maree Bredhauer - presentation (2.77Mb pdf file).
Leadership of Learning Communities - Liliana Mularczyk - presentation (3.89Mb pdf file).
The Principles of Wise Leadership - Melinda Zanetich - presentation (1.46Mb pdf file).
Reading Hits a High - Wendy Inman - presentation (394Kb pdf file).
The Transition of a School to Learning Teams - Dennis Yarrington - presentation (897Kb pdf file).
Principals: Creating the Climate for Change - Rowena Zwart - presentation (1.43Mb pdf file).
A Survey: Observational and Experimental Evaluation of Online Curriculum - Peter Freebody - presentation (510Kb pdf file).
The Perils of Producing a Curriculum that is really suited to the 21st Century - Penny Andersen - presentation (239Kb pdf file).
Differentiation Instruction: What is it? How do we do it? - Craig Fullerton - presentation (1.77Mb pdf file).
The Business of Boys and Brains: What's Different about Teaching and Learning in a Boys' Class, and What Difference Does It Make? - Robyn Waller - presentation (6.94Mb PowerPoint file).
Enhancing the Philosophy to Create a Community of Learning - Angela Drysdale - presentation (912Kb pdf file).
Perspectives on Personalising Learning - Angela Bird - presentation (3.08Mb pdf file).
Having the Hard Conversations for Performance Management - Jan D'Arcy & Lynn Healy (799Kb pdf file), audio recording (27.0Mb mp3 file).
Session 2 – David Bartlett – Minister for Education
Leadership: he chose one of the three themes of the conference to talk about.
Leadership is about knowledge and action – not a magical prescription bestowed at birth, but a never-ending journey.
A few leadership attributes and traits:
Trait 1 – know the context – the data that drives the environment, community and school.
Trait 2 – act ethically and with compassion. Must take a strand on ethics and values. Might even be about reaching out to others, and placing their needs above our own.
Trait 3 – focus on the important rather than the urgent.
Trait 4 – to live dangerously; when lead people through difficult change, you challenge people.
Trait 5 – must nurture leadership in others, both at school and system level.
Trait 6 – must persuade people that they are doing the right thing, not just do the right thing. Momentum + conflict + novelty = leadership in politics.
Full Text of his address:
Good morning. Thanks for inviting me to officially open the joint conference of the Australian Primary Principals Association and the Australian Secondary Principals Association.
I’d like to warmly welcome all delegates from our Government, Catholic and Independent schools in Tasmania and, indeed, from across the country. I also welcome New Zealand delegates and our other international friends who are with us this week.
I hope you have a productive few days networking at the conference, followed by a few days enjoying the scenery, food and fine wine Tasmania has to offer!
Your conference title is The Winds of Change, looking at the themes of Leadership, Learning and Performance.
My main priorities as Education Minister reflect these themes.
VISION My vision is about quality curriculum, quality facilities and quality educators.
GOALS Our goals are to improve support for children in their Early Years; improve Literacy and Numeracy outcomes for students and lift retention of students to Year 12 or equivalent.
STRATEGIES Strategies have developed from taskforces, reference groups and focus groups around building stronger community and parent relationships, providing more resources for schools and improving teaching, learning and curriculum.
As principals you often have the responsibility of bringing all of these pieces together. You provide inspiration, knowledge and leadership to your staff and students and to parents.
Your job couldn’t be more important. STUDENT AT THE CENTRE The Tasmanian Government’s Student at the Centre reforms recognise that as principals you are in the best position to make decisions about resourcing and the day-to-day running of your schools.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with Student at the Centre, it’s an 18-month plan to give schools more control over the resources and direction of the Department of Education and focus on the needs of students.
We’re moving from a centralist approach to one driven by teachers and principals in our schools.
The capacity to bring about improvement rests in our schools, and it also depends on leadership. This is about giving principals and teachers the support they need and recognising that decision making needs to occur at a local level.
To achieve this we’re putting more money through the school gate. We’re giving the funds to those who know how best to use them – by returning resources to principals and school communities.
Just last week, on the recommendation of a Reference Group of school principals, we announced an additional $12 million will be provided to support high and additional needs students in our schools. This money had previously been tied up in co-ordination and administration activities.
We’ve also formed four new regional School Improvement Boards, made up of business and community leaders and school principals, to help achieve better outcomes for students.
Business and community leaders will bring their own practical skills to the boards, to help schools in areas like finance and links with the community.
These boards provide the opportunity for leaders from schools, businesses and communities to work together for the benefit of all Tasmanian students.
PRINCIPALS AS LEADERS
I believe you, the Principals of our schools, are the educational leaders of our nation.
Noted education leader William Spady says:
"But in too many schools in too many countries, the structure of the education system has undermined the leadership role of teachers. These systems have set up policymakers as "the leaders", principals as "the managers" charged with putting the policies in place, and teachers as "the implementers" of the policies. This model assumes that the policymakers know everything and have it right; the principals only need to be watchful and make sure the policies are carried out; and the teachers should simply follow orders. Despite all claims to the contrary, this way of thinking about education has never worked and cannot work."
This quote for me best describes the organisation we have been working in and the type of organisation I want to move rapidly away from. I believe leadership is about taking people on a journey with you. If only it were that easy. How do we know our journey is the right journey? How do we bring people with us? Leadership is a subject that truly fascinates me.
LEARNING FROM COLLEAGUES I don’t believe leadership is some magical charismatic quality that is bestowed upon someone at birth … but that good leadership, when experienced, can be distilled down to knowledge and action. I witness that knowledge and action every time I visit a school. My own biases and thoughts about leadership are shaped every day by the leadership I see happening in Tasmanian schools. I have distilled my ideas on leadership into a few attributes or traits of leadership. They are the attributes or traits that I endeavour to bring to my job every day. I don’t pretend that they are the be all and end all of leadership study.
To understand leadership is, of course a never ending journey. But I do believe the successful leaders I have observed share some traits. No doubt each of us here has our own ‘take’ on leadership. Here is mine.
First Trait – leaders they know their context. Ronald A. Heifitz, author of books such as Leadership without Easy Answers and Leadership On The Line, argues that leaders who want to effect real and long lasting change, must first deeply understand the context that they are working in.
I remember receiving an email from Brian Wightman, principal of Winnaleah Primary school in the far North-East of this state before heading up there. He had just conducted a warts and all review of how his school was traveling and shared the information with me. It was clear to me Brian understood his community and where his school was at. The school was well positioned to build on the wonderful things already happening there.
Similarly, on the same trip, Peter Daniels at Deloraine Primary school stopped me in the front foyer of his school and pointed to a display on the wall showing his school’s test and performance data over recent years. Peter too, was very clear on what this information meant for his school and where it needed to go. It wasn’t just wallpaper. The school was using this information to do great things for its students.
Second Trait – leaders act ethically and with compassion. I believe we, as leaders, need to take a stand on the issues of values and ethics. As Heifitz puts it, “How can we possibly guide and challenge people without the capacity to put ourselves in their shoes and imagine what they are going through?” I wonder whether leadership may even be about love? By that I mean reaching out to others, giving of ourselves to them and placing their needs above our own. I know this is easier said than done.
I fondly remember my visit to Glen Huon Primary School last year which was so well led by the late Michael Pearce. The close relationship and mutual respect between Michael and his students, staff parents and community was clearly evident. Just as evident was the capacity of the school and its people to add value to very dollar it received. Adventure playgrounds, vegetable gardens, converted buildings and newly paved and fenced areas had all been achieved largely through goodwill.
I also remember visiting Beaconsfield Primary school not long after the Beaconsfield mine disaster and being struck by the care and compassion evident among each member of the school and its community and the way they had all rallied together in difficult times. The acting principal of the time, Troy Roberts, had clearly played a pivotal role in supporting his school and community, placing their needs above his own.
Third Trait - Leaders focus on the important, not the urgent. As leaders, I believe we all need to make daily decisions between the urgent and the important. And it shouldn’t always be the urgent that wins this battle. If we only concern ourselves with the urgent, we will never address the important, the underlying drivers for improvement. This way of thinking was brought home to me in my meetings with principals in the Glenorchy and Jordan River clusters in Southern Tasmania. These principals are examining how their communities, as well as their schools, may be renewed and are considering some creative and innovative approaches to schooling.
In my current endeavours, I am working hard to free leaders like them from as much of the “urgent” as I can so that they can focus on the “important”.
Fourth Trait - To be a leader is to live dangerously. To lead is to live dangerously because when leadership counts, when you lead people through difficult change, you challenge what people hold dear—their daily habits, tools, loyalties, and ways of thinking—with nothing more to offer perhaps than a possibility of improvement.
I remember my visit to Table Cape Primary school in Wynyard last year and listening to principal, John Heron talk about how he would like to re-organise the school. He wanted to establish an early childhood campus at one end of town and an upper primary campus at the other end of town. There were, at the time, two campuses both offering similar Kindergarten to Grade 6 programs. He felt the kids could get a better deal with these new arrangements. He has since done the hard yards, holding community meetings and bringing people on board with his vision, which is now coming to fruition. He is leading people through, what is for some, a difficult change. The children of Wynyard will be the long term beneficiaries of his risk taking.
Fifth Trait: Leaders nurture leadership in others. I believe school leaders have got to trust other people to do a good job. We can’t do it all ourselves. Sometimes other people will actually do a better job than we will. Leaders have got to commit themselves to dispersing leadership across their schools. We, as a system, must also target and nurture the next generation of school leaders. As Bill Mulford, whom we will hear from shortly says, we cannot afford to ignore their selection, retention and continued learning if we want student outcomes to be the best they can be.
I feel uplifted every time I walk into schools and see the energy, commitment and skills of our current and aspiring leaders. For example, how lucky the communities of Bruny Island and Bicheno are to have young leaders like Ben Stockwin and Andrew Woodard to be cutting their teeth as school principals in those areas. We need to encourage more young people to take on similar challenges.
Sixth Trait: Leaders must not just do the right thing but must persuade people they are doing the right thing. How do we get it right? How do we come to a position that we believe to be right? These questions have been grappled with for thousands of years so my two cents worth here isn’t about to change the world. I do think, however, we owe it to ourselves to access the wisdom of others and agonise over decisions before we make them – not after! I disagree with the current bulk of conventional wisdom about politics. Often those wishing to lead have a strategy is based on three things: momentum, conflict, and novelty. Whereas, Heifitz argues, the frontline in any organisation or community requires: empowerment, partnership and consistency.
I believe that message is more important than money; issues are more central than image; strategy matters more than tactics; positives work better than negatives; substance is more salient than spin and values matter more than economics. People know if you’re fair dinkum or not. The leadership of our Tasmanian colleagues Liz Banks, Malcolm Hales and Warren Pill on the relocation of Rocherlea Primary School to a site at Brooks High School must be a powerful example of not only doing the right thing, but persuading others such as the Rocherlea and surrounding community that it is the right thing.
THANK YOU In welcoming you, I want to conclude by saying that I’m really looking forward to participating in this conference and learning from my conversations with delegates and people such as Bill Mulford, Stephen Jacobson, Maria Pallotta-Chiarolloi, Allanna Corbin, Mark McKeon and, via satellite, Dennis Littky. In Tasmania, we are very fortunate to have such ready access to Bill Mulford’s world class research on educational leadership, which we will use to inform our planning for, and nurturing of, school leadership.
I must also commend Conference Convenor, Rob Banfield, TPA President Jan Larcombe and their team on the outstanding program of workshops that support the keynote presentations. Many of these workshops are being led by current practicing school leaders. This is indeed a rich offering.
As Eleanor Roosevelt once said, 'The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams'. Enjoy your conference.
