Papers and Good Practices

ABSTRACT

This paper explores key aspects required to foster leadership for whole child development. The need for a holistic approach to child development has intensified following the Covid-19 pandemic, as welfare issues became more prominent and more urgent. Recognition that school and student outcomes cannot be assessed only through public examination results was enhanced through this challenging period. The symposium’s four ‘fundamental domains’ are key to this orientation. Vision is always central to developing and communicating a sense of purpose and this may be even more important following the pandemic.

The vision should be wide-ranging but may include broadening the curriculum, so that the narrow aspects featured in the PISA rankings, language, mathematics and science, are matched by a focus on sport, drama and music, for example, to develop the whole child. In addition, traditional monitoring activities associated with instructional leadership, designed to improve classroom practice, should be combined with revitalising the school community, including parents and students, as well as teachers.

This whole child approach requires a flexible approach to leadership that goes beyond traditional bureaucratic and transactional models to empower all stakeholders through transformational and distributed approaches.

KEYWORDS: Child development, Covid-19, distributed leadership, instructional leadership, transformational leadership

ABSTRACT

The educational project of a school constitutes an instrument of management of the same, a guide that translates the identity of each educational organization through the formulation of values, principles, objectives and strategies, an autonomous option that each school, combined with a strategic vision to carry out the learning and the whole child development (WCD).

This research work aims to: analyze the educational projects of four groups of schools in Portugal in the light of the Student Exit Profile at the end of ESO and its alignment with the principles of whole child development; understand the vision of the directors on the challenges of educational leadership for the design and implementation of a educational project with the perspective WCD; and understand the organizational dynamics that must be implemented in schools to operationalize an educational project for WCD.

A qualitative approach has been carried out, using documentary analysis and interviews as data collection tools. The results point to the commitment of the principals in the design, construction and implementation of an educational project for WCD, triggering organizational mechanisms in their groups of schools, but showing some limitations in its implementation. On the other hand, the educational project continues to be a little transformative, static instrument, lacking a systemic dimension that unites the parts and gives it more meaning, from a strategic vision.

KEYWORDS: Educational project; Whole Child Development; Educational leadership; Organizational dynamics.

ABSTRACT

The Spanish Association of Second Chance Schools (E2O) has generated a process of accreditation of the educational units that carry out their activity, allowing, in the period 2017-2022, an evaluation of educational and management practice by the management teams of 43 schools, which bring together 7,952 vulnerable young people, accompanied by 918 professionals.

The defined process stands out for its focus on educational improvement, through an objective, rigorous and systematized evaluation system, in which external agents participate and which helps management and teaching teams to evaluate their practices and make strategic decisions that allow improvement oriented towards excellence. Thanks to this process, it has been possible to identify and bring together a population of schools working with a vulnerable group of young people with difficulties in academic progress and professional qualification. Accredited E2O schools have proven to work with the recognition of public administrations, favoring the lasting professional and social integration of these young people, allowing the development of their social and professional skills. All this task is carried out with a networking perspective with its environment and with a special collaboration with the business fabric.

KEYWORDS: Second chance, early educational abandonment, educational excellence, integral education; whole child development.

ABSTRACT

The term “distributed leadership” (or shared) was well received in our school context for breaking with any longing for an exceptional individual (hero, with power or charisma). An organization that develops and sustains itself over time, is because it has managed to involve and commit others in its improvement, as a dynamizer of the interpersonal relationships of the school; empowering, sharing and distributing leadership capacity in their respective areas and levels.

We review this topic from a preferential view of his research in the Ibero-American field. A certain map of their entry and development in this field is thus made: leadership for learning, organizations that learn, professional communities. Likewise, the “expansive” perspective that it has currently acquired as “lateral” leaderships: intermediate leaderships, professional learning networks and between schools. In short, a “multilevel” distributed practice (Spillane et al., 2023), which emphasizes the collective or community character of school dynamics, integrated into a framework in which people, cognition and context operate simultaneously. The focus is on interactions, rather than individual actions, in a given cultural context. Some of these dimensions have been confirmed in the COVID-19 pandemic (Bolívar et al., 2022).

KEYWORDS: Shared leadership, community of practice, middle leadership, networks between schools..

ABSTRACT

Mentoring is a collaborative strategy of help and accompaniment for change and personal and professional development that has shown its effectiveness in the training of educational leaders. This communication describes and analyzes the development of a School Improvement Plan with the help of Mentoring with which the Pilot Program on Whole Child Development Leadership (WCDL) ends.

Using a qualitative methodological approach, eight cases of mentoring management teams are studied and analyzed as a single case. Information gathering tools include participatory observation, audio-visual recordings, and documentary analysis of the minutes of mentoring sessions, training sessions and wrap-up meetings. The sample of participants is made up of 21 managers from eight public schools of special vulnerability in the Community of Madrid (Spain), eight mentors and two coordinators. The results reveal the importance of mentoring to implement the improvement plan of the schools, to deepen the basic aspects of the WCD leadership course, and to incorporate the WCDL vision into leadership practices by developing capacities in mentors and mentees.

KEYWORDS: Mentoring, educational leadership, integral education, whole child development, vulnerable environments

ABSTRACT

Teach For All and Teach for Nigeria (TFN) have partnered with RAND Corporation to conduct the first quasi-experimental study of the Teach for All network’s approach to holistic child development (WCD) through ongoing training and training of new teachers. The study investigates multiple facets of integrative education outcomes, including mastery of fundamental literacy, mathematics, social and emotional skills that are prioritized by the TFN program and local education authorities, and school-level factors that contribute to WCD.

From 2021 to 2022, the TFN programme was successful in improving fundamental literacy and mathematics skills. Students in classrooms whose teachers were members of the TFN program had approximately standard deviations 0.11 higher in math and 0.07 higher in literacy, compared to students in the control group. Qualitative findings indicate parents’ and fellow teachers’ perceptions of progress in terms of student behavior and social-emotional development; however, the quantitative impact study found no evidence that social and emotional skills improved differentially between TFN and non-TFN students. The study will continue through the 2022-2023 academic year to better understand the effect of TFN program members over two years in creating WCD-enabling environments.

KEYWORDS: impact assessment, social and emotional learning, school community, holistic child development, fundamental learning.

ABSTRACT

A thorough and rigorous evaluation of the practice in our educational centers is as necessary as it is rare. Despite the verification of this need in the different educational laws, there are hardly any mechanisms or instruments to carry it out from the public administrations. Beyond statistical studies on the education system as a whole, or reports on more specific aspects, there is no corpus of state indicators to evaluate, draw conclusions and improve. Nor do the centres themselves have proven and useful tools to carry out their own evaluations.

At FUHEM we have developed a model for evaluating practice that is developed in many areas: from the most general, which we call context and processes of the school or of each of the classrooms, to the annual monitoring of the results of the students and, in particular, the most vulnerable.

To carry out these evaluations periodically, we have external support but also with the members of the management of each of the schools, who are the ones who must be responsible, coordinate the evaluation and promote participatory processes of reflection of all the members of the educational community.

KEYWORDS: Evaluation, educational practice, improvement, management teams.

ABSTRACT

Different reference bodies such as UNESCO, the European Commission and the OECD, among others, evidence the importance of the initial training of future teachers in the quality of an education system. The results of the international study on teaching and learning (TALIS 2018), indicate that teacher training – initial, access and permanent – of quality has a positive impact on the personal and professional development of teachers, educational outcomes of students and the reduction of early school leaving.

The training center, as a reference for external pedagogical practice, must consider training as a key element for improvement. In this sense, the creation of communities of practice generates spaces for reflection that aim to share strategies and actions to lead a pedagogical debate within the centers that favors the establishment of a consensual pedagogical line focused on learning the teaching task and co-constructing collective knowledge in order to create a shared culture on the professionalizing model of mentoring.

Collaboration between training centers is fundamental for the creation, construction and transfer of knowledge and its application from teaching practice in real learning contexts.

KEYWORDS: Community of practice, training centers, mentoring, collaboration, co-creation.

ABSTRACT

The objective of this communication is, on the one hand, to highlight to what extent school autonomy allows management teams to promote projects that improve the quality of education by being able to focus and adapt to the needs of students. To this end, we will also review how it is measured and valued in the international framework.

On the other hand, it will be analyzed whether the latest educational reforms are open to allowing effective autonomy or if, on the contrary, formal declarations persist that are not reflected in the educational practice of the schools, as it seems to be so. Finally, some proposal will be offered to overcome the current regulatory immobility and the limitations to the autonomy that the legal nature of the educational center itself entails in our legislation and particularly in relation to public schools.

KEYWORDS: Autonomy, leadership, quality, accountability, equity.

ABSTRACT

The curricular reforms of the LOMLOE already point unequivocally towards teaching based on the competency approach to learning. After 50 years in the supranational pedagogical literature, the principle of Lifelong Learning has already permeated the educational reforms of the most educationally advanced countries and has materialized in a curriculum that shifts the focus from purely cognitive content, towards a combination of these with different skills and attitudes that result in performances that allow solving real problems of daily life efficiently and help to continue learning. consistently and solidly in the future.

The implementation of a curriculum of this nature requires methodological flexibility, and creative forms of organization of the school and programming of spaces and times dedicated to generating competency learning situations. […]

[…] To manage this new scenario of autonomy successfully, strong pedagogical leadership is essential. This communication reviews some of the factors that are most determinant, according to supranational educational policies, for the adequate professional profile of pedagogical leader that this new context of school autonomy needs within the framework of competency teaching.

KEYWORDS: Autonomy of schools, school organization, pedagogical leadership, innovation, competence curriculum, curricular areas.

ABSTRACT

The Human and Social Sciences, and in particular Archaeology, can allow refocusing the curriculum, given its interdisciplinary character, its versatility and its critical nature. The LOMLOE establishes, within its guidelines, that students should acquire a “scientific culture”. We believe that Archaeology can be the ideal way to connect, in a transversal way, the different areas of knowledge, in order to achieve a comprehensive learning within the framework of attractive and innovative projects.

In this paper we defend that Archaeology has a series of values that promote the integral development of students and favor the acquisition of different skills. At the same time, Archaeology allows to develop and facilitate conceptual learning and the consolidation of contents, giving them meaning […] In conclusion, we will say that Archaeology, as a scientific discipline, provides an innovative refocusing of the curriculum and allows to provide teachers and students with a wide range of procedures, methods and learning contents.

KEYWORDS: archaeology, transversality, interdisciplinarity, curriculum, scientific method.

ABSTRACT

Through this activity, the students, 469 young people who were in the 2nd year of Basic Vocational Training and 1st/2nd year of Intermediate Level, reflected on the functioning of the educational system and prepared a collective text ““Our vision of education”” , which gathers the ideas, feelings and opinions that this group of young people have on this subject.

El escrito colectivo se ha elaborado con una técnica didáctica que permite generar un escrito desde una autoría grupal, la escritura colectiva. Esta técnica ofrece una riqueza muy relevante a nivel pedagógico y es propia de la Escuela de Barbiana.

The collective writing has been elaborated with a didactic technique that allows to generate a writing from a group authorship, the collective writing. This technique offers a very relevant richness at a pedagogical level and is typical of the Barbiana School.

As a result, 26 teachers have experienced the use of a didactic technique with many positive virtues, enabling them to use it again to reflect with their students and generate various collective writings with a communicative purpose. The students have produced a collective text that reflects their ideas about the educational system and has reached different levels of responsibility in this field.

KEYWORDS: critical reflection, basic competences, educational pathway, group work, collective writing

ABSTRACT

Relationships with people constitute one of the basic dimensions of Whole Child Development Leadership in disadvantaged contexts (WCDL). WCD leadership seeks the development of students, but also that of teachers, families, and the school environment, so the accompaniment and search for the commitment of all on the path towards achieving a shared goal is an inalienable facet of this model (Esteban et al., 2019).

This communication addresses three issues in relation to this core domain of WCDL, which, although closely interrelated in practice, can be differentiated for the purposes of their presentation. Thus, in the first place, the need arises to work to transform the school into an authentic educational community. Next, the importance of the school functioning as a learning and professional development community for teachers is emphasized. Finally, it is addressed as a matter of great relevance in disadvantaged contexts the fact that this educational community is open to families and the environment.

KEYWORDS: Leadership for whole child development, school, educational community, family-school relationship

ABSTRACT

The purpose of the study is none other than to raise the approach of the Knowledge Funds as a window of opportunity in the direction of a more inclusive educational leadership; or what is the same, a leadership focused on equity practices appropriate to contexts of social vulnerability.

Progress in democratic quality requires leadership where projects based on a greater effective connection between school and community are recognized. We argue that uncertainty management recommends the consideration of culturally responsible educational leadership, examining the extent to which social capital can make a difference in an area where ethnic diversity is associated with situations of risk for poor, migrant or refugee families. In this regard, the Knowledge Funds, as knowledge accumulated in the course of family practices and lifestyles, have proven advantageous in their school use when it comes to improving the performance of students and the participation of their parents in the schools.

We conclude by advocating the approach as a useful tool in any strategic plan attentive to the diversification of knowledge that, beyond the academic world, exists in the community as a whole […]

KEYWORDS: Knowledge Funds, Educational Leadership, Inclusion, Social Capital, Family.

ABSTRACT

The current educational situation requires a distributed leadership that is put into action by promoting teacher leadership. However, the concept of teacher leadership is still somewhat diffuse in our country. This study aims to know the perception that school management has about the functions, the institutions that help their training and the characteristics of the ado-leader teacher. To this end, an ad hoc questionnaire was designed for members of the school board in which they had to indicate their degree of agreement. 82 responses were obtained from different Autonomous Communities, mainly from Catalonia, Madrid and Valencia.

The results indicate that the functions performed by the teacher-leader are developed both in the classroom context and outside the classroom, the most prominent being those of being an agent of change, as well as teacher professional improvement. The most related to the classroom are those that have to do with evaluation practices, support for students with needs and innovation in the classroom. The least prominent refer to aspects of school management such as involvement with the administrative team and in curricular activities.

KEYWORDS: Teacher leadership, teacher-leader, school management

ABSTRACT

The integration of digital technologies into society in general and into educational territories is inevitable. Several international organizations consider that digital technologies are an important tool for societies, which makes people competitive and increasingly prepared for a world that is constantly changing and accelerating. The profile of today’s students is not the same as that of students of the late twentieth century. Although we do not assume Mark Prensky’s concept of digital natives, the truth is that students arrive at school loaded with digital equipment, particularly their smartphones.

European policies point to the need to create digital infrastructures in the different aspects of society and also in education and to define local policies that lead to a sustained increase in the digital literacy of the different actors. This holistic approach will allow digital tools to function as a support for social inclusion. Increasing the skills (also digital) of our students (and teachers) will make them more competent, more resilient and able to face changes with the powerful tools that the digital world puts at their disposal.

KEYWORDS: Digital technologies, social inclusion, digital inclusion, digital strategies.

ABSTRACT

School contexts are directly affected by the multidimensional crisis we are experiencing today. Faced with this crisis, education can assume the problems and integrate them into the learning scheme of students from a critical and active position, or, on the contrary, not position themselves and maintain themselves in a reproductive inertia of the social order. Eco-social education makes a commitment to the former.

To transform an educational center, the main space of intervention is the classroom. It is essential to change what is learned, how it is learned and how it is evaluated. For this, we expose 8 large blocks of learning and a series of methodological and evaluative criteria to educate under the Eco-social approach in all stages and areas of knowledge.

In addition to the transformation of the classroom, changes are also necessary in other areas of the school. Specifically, in what happens in extracurricular periods, in the physical environment in which learning takes place, in the management of the school and in the participation of the entire educational community. To carry out these transformations, the work of management teams is decisive.

KEYWORDS: Eco-social education, curriculum, Eco-social crisis, transformative education.