joi, 5 octombrie 2017

Module 3: STEM leading schools

Module Objectives
The learning objectives of Module 3 are:
  • To comprehend the concept of school leadership and its typologies and the concept of a STEM leading school;
  • To understand the different types of career-counselling approaches at the school level;
  • To learn how to integrate different professional roles into STEM career awareness;
  • To learn how to build a STEM career-counselling vision and action plan for your school.

3.1 School leadership: what does it mean?

As we have seen in previous modules, knowledge and skills in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields are crucial in responding to some of today’s societal changes. These STEM skills are important in everyday life but they can also lead to various STEM career pathways. The school plays a major role in opening the minds of students to these necessary skills and corresponding future career opportunities.
In this module, we will provide you with concrete activities in the area of school leadership, enabling you to effect a change in the management strategy of your school when it comes to STEM education. In this first section, we will learn about which role you should take on - as a head of school or as a career counsellor - while exploring strategies to promote STEM skills in the school. Start by watching the video below, featuring some interviews of school educators and heads of schools in the United States, to get a first impression of what school leadership means for them:
As mentioned in the above video, school leadership is defined as a process of social influence (rather than authority), mobilising (not imposing) other efforts to reach objectives as part of a broader vision (sometimes beyond the single school level).
According to research findings (Spillane, 2006), school leadership is related to student achievements, in the sense that it affects students’ motivation and the quality of the school organisation, and acts as a catalyst for the potential of the school staff, which are all factors directly affecting pupils’ learning.
Leadership may be exercised by groups as well as by individuals, in some cases even by someone independent of positional authority (contrary to school management). Depending on the context, the school leadership will correspond to roles formally assigned to and/or informally shared with a larger group of teachers. This supports the concepts of (1) shared leadership (that is, when leadership is divided between several leaders, sharing complementary influence and expertise) and (2) teacher leadership (shared responsibilities, peer collaboration, group work, etc. even across schools).
  • Practices of School Leadership
We should bear in mind that each school is different and school leadership can be developed in very different ways. Below, we show a number of School Leadership practices that can be applied (based on the article Building Leadership Talent through Performance Evaluation by Matthew Clifford (2015)):
  • - Build shared purpose: The leader develops a shared organisational vision and assures that the vision is “lived out” in the daily work of educators.
    Example: Providing a strong curriculum with a focus on science, technology, mathematics and entrepreneurship, for advanced secondary levels.
  • - Focus on learning: The leader develops and maintains student access to suitable, strong instructional programs focused on academic excellence and social-emotional development.
    Example: Developing instructional programs focused on STEM learning activities.
  • - Manage organisational resources: The leader acts strategically and systematically to create safe and supportive conditions for better teaching and learning by aligning financial and human resources or data, among other things.
    Example: Organising monthly meetings with teachers in order to discuss STEM activities.
  • - Collaborate with community: The leader makes sure that parents and community organisations are engaged with the school.
    Example: Finding mentors who will share their STEM expertise with students. They will play a critical role in helping students turn their passion and creativity into doable action plans.
  • - Lead with integrity: The leader models professionalism by acting with integrity and making his or her learning “visible”.
    Example: Creating an atmosphere of open communication can help implement the STEM vision in a school.
If you want to find out more about shared and distributed leadership and how it can build capacity for change and improvement, you can read this very interesting article from the Australian Council for Educational Research.

Activity 1: Taking into account the article Building Leadership Talent through Performance Evaluation by Matthew Clifford (2015), answer in the Mentimeter below: what, in your opinion, are the three main elements defining efficient school leadership?

3.2 How to implement a STEM strategy at the school level

School leadership is often necessary in order to develop an efficient STEM strategy at the school level. Nevertheless, there is no real consensus about the main components of STEM leading schools, nor a clear definition about what a STEM school should be at the European level. According to the study The eight essential elements of inclusive STEM high schools, conducted in the United States and published in the International Journal of STEM Education in 2016, the common goals and strategies employed by inclusive STEM high schools across the country are the following:
  • Personalisation of Learning
  • Problem-Based Learning
  • Rigorous Learning
  • Career, Technology and Life Skills
  • School Community and Belonging
  • External Community
  • Staff Foundations
  • External Factors
These elements are not strictly related to STEM disciplinary content, but they can help you to start building a STEM-related strategy in your school and to integrate different types of career counselling approaches related to STEM activities.
As you saw in Module 1, there are different possible career counselling approaches and scenarios depending on the school. In the following list, we remind you of these scenarios and we provide you with possible strategies to foster STEM career awareness, taking said scenarios into account:
  • Teachers integrating career-counselling activities in the classroom: In this scenario, the school has not developed any career counselling strategy or professional role. The only approach to counselling, if any, is that of integrating a limited number of career-related activities into classroom activities conducted by school staff.
  • Teachers acting as career counsellors: In many cases, schools identify a particular teacher to lead career counselling activities. Some schools might appoint a teacher to take on the role of a “head of careers”. This approach identifies careers as a specific area to take into account and gives the appointed teacher an additional role that might bring him/her more prestige. This approach poses the risk that teachers selected as “head of careers” are given minimal time to discharge their role and/or receive very little training for it. This approach can also be adopted by developing the role of the “career coordinator”, emphasising management and coordination of career activities across the school rather than in the classroom. While in some cases career coordinators are teachers, this role can also be developed by a career guidance professional, which brings us to the next scenario...
  • Schools collaborating with a professional career counsellor: Under a school-based model, schools can appoint a specialist in career guidance to work with the school and to develop specific guidance activities for students.
  • Schools collaborating with a career center: This normally entails a partnership between schools and an external specialist service whereby a number of internal school stakeholders (including heads of school and the career teacher/coordinator) work closely with the career centre. This approach can be developed by a national or regional government, in which case the partnership with a career centre is mandatory, or it can be developed as a school’s own initiative. Within this category, we could also find partnerships between schools and potential employers and post-secondary learning providers.
    Depending on these scenarios, teachers or career counsellors can have different professional roles, which offer a blueprint for the professional skills that would be required to deliver this kind of whole-school approach to STEM career awareness.
Specifically for teachers, in the report Teachers and Careers: The Role of School Teachers in Delivering Career and Employability Learning, different professional roles are defined as follows:
Tutorial roles:
—> Career informant: a teacher can act as a trusted adult and inform a young person’s career building based on his own vocational decisions and experiences.
—> Pastoral support: by providing pastoral support, the teacher can also help to make links to career decisions and career support.
Teaching roles:
—> Within-subject: the teacher will make direct connections between the subject taught and career employability learning (CEL). Employability skills will be built through the curriculum.
—> Delivering career and employability learning (CEL): specific CEL programmes can be developed and involve teachers in the delivery stage.
Leadership roles:
—> Leading career and employability learning: teachers can have different roles of leadership such as Coordinator of Careers / School’s Acting Career Leader / Head of Careers.
—> Senior leadership: Providing senior leadership relating to careers and associated areas.

“If all six roles are present and being delivered effectively, there are likely to be synergy (sic) between them, with all roles connecting to each other and leading to enhanced outcomes." The different roles could be integrated into an inclusive STEM school strategy in order to be more effective. (Hooley, 2015)

Activity 2: On the basis of the article The eight essential elements of inclusive STEM schools, share your thoughts on the padlet below: how you would implement at least one of the cited essential elements in your school in order to promote STEM education?

3.3 How to collaborate with different professionals within the school

In the previous section, you saw how different professional roles within a school can work together to deliver efficient STEM career counselling. As a head of school, however, you might have different views on how to foster collaboration in your school.
Check out the following video from our Scientix Heads of Schools Interview Series, where we sit down with heads of schools to talk about collaboration between teachers and school leaders and about what a head of school can do to support teacher collaboration.
A key concept when it comes to collaboration is establishing and maintaining relationships between professionals within the school and outside the school. To find out what benefits further collaboration with STEM community organisations can bring for the students, check out the following video about the P-Tech project, a programme combining high school, university and the professional world. The programme’s mission is to provide students with free education starting at grade nine (of the US education system), continuing through the completion of high school and ending in the attainment of an Associate Degree in Computer Technology.

Activity 3: Feeling inspired? Tell us how you feel about collaboration in your school in 3 words, using the following link: https://www.menti.com/bcdfc9

3.4 How to build a STEM career-counselling vision and action plan

The School Organisation and STEM Career-related Learning report mentions different STEM career-awareness strategies that can be applied at the school level, depending on whether career-related learning is integrated in STEM subject lessons or not.
As mentioned in this report, several schools in the UK provided examples of the ways in which they had integrated career-related learning into their STEM lessons. Let’s see some of those:
  • In one of the schools, STEM was integrated as an option in the UK year 9 curriculum. Within this learning option, employability skills were emphasised, along with vocational and academic routeways into STEM employment.
  • Another school integrated the learning of technology and its practical application across all subjects, including elements of occupations and job roles.
  • A third school integrated career-related learning into their career week: the school asked all teachers to deliver a lesson on the career destinations that the study of their subject could lead to.
  • In other cases, the extra-curricular model was applied, inviting external speakers to support a project or a theme (STEM ambassadors were mentioned by most schools as the external speakers). Examples of activities developed include:
    • A QUEST challenge was organised, during which the school asked students to deliver a set of challenges on a STEM agenda, such as problem-solving activities related to bridge building, aerodynamics (rocket building) and robotics projects;
    • Ambassadors were brought to schools to talk about their careers. Students were also encouraged to go out of school and interview STEM workers about their professional roles and career.
    • As out-of-school activities, a school contacted university science departments and organised visits to a hospital, so students could directly engage with professionals and get a clearer idea of their professional trajectories.
  • The school “Great Sankey” brought together teachers from different subjects (including science, enterprise and mathematics) with the career coordinator, in order to build a diverse and inclusive range of learning opportunities. To learn more about this STEM School strategy, read Box 1 of the School organisation and STEM career-related learning report (page 13).
  • The school “Barr Beacon” organises career-related learning activities starting in Year 7 (UK), providing a foundation for the integration of STEM skill building and for STEM career learning within enterprise subjects. The program of “career-related learning” starts during the school’s induction days (for the new students in Year 7) and features career learning in the so-called personal, social, health and economic lessons, speakers including STEM ambassadors, career resources supported by students, a web designed by students and “enterprise days” on specific STEM themes and a STEM careers fair. If you want to know more about this STEM school strategy, read Box 2 of the report (page 14).
However, in order to implement a STEM school strategy, is it always necessary to develop a shared vision at the school level? Check out some testimonies from primary and post-primary heads of school about leadership and about their school vision, in particular dealing with e-learning in their schools and with the importance of establishing an e-culture throughout the school.

Now that you have seen several ways in which to insert STEM strategy in your school, it is time to remind you that self-assessment of your career-related learning activities is key. According to the School Organisation and STEM Career-related Learning report (page 16), measuring the impact of each type of activity is necessary in order to shape a strategy about students’ STEM career-related learning. On that note, here are a number of different dimensions that could be measured:
  1. Impact on student engagement and interest: By asking simple questions (e.g. did students enjoy the activity? Would they do it again?)
  2. Impact on student learning: It is necessary to assess what students learnt about STEM subjects and STEM careers during an activity and to compare it to their previous knowledge. 
  3. Application of student learning: Students should be capable of applying what they learned during their study of STEM subjects/careers. 
  4. Activation of student learning: Assessing the direct implications of STEM learning and what the students have done as a direct consequence of the activity.

Activity 4: Click here and share what plans your school has to continue the promotion of STEM subject choices and STEM careers.

3.5 Bibliography




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