Resilient and adaptive schools have three key characteristics: 1. They focus on collaboration where small insights and observations are shared, which can lead to major changes in teaching and learning. 2. They look for patterns in student and teacher behavior rather than just stories, to better understand the school as an ecosystem. 3. They problem-solve collaboratively and prototype solutions, going for workable solutions with commitment.

1. The Resilient Leader and the
AdaptiveSchool
Stephen Murgatroyd, PhD FBPsS FRSA
Masterclass B - Queensland Association of State School Principals
14th September, 2017

2. SystemsThinking
Before we can understand resilience and adaptive
capacity, we need to understand the school as an
ecosystem

3. FiveKeyElementsofSchoolasanEco-System
 Every child comes from a complex family, cultural and social
system
 Every teacher comes from a different complex, family, cultural
and social system coupled with assumptions about their role,
professionalism and tasks
 Every school is placed in a community and communities have
complex histories, biographies and dynamics
 Every school is part of a school system and no two schools
within that system are the same and no two school systems are
the same
 Every school has rhythms, disruptions and dynamics which
change daily - superficially the same, always different

4. SenseMaking
 Making sense of a school as an ecosystem requires us to understand:
 Small data and nuances of the school – insights which shift understanding
and perceptions and provide “ha-ha” moments
 Big data – patterns over time
 The compassion, empathy and emotional climate of the school
 The learning outcomes within the school – not just those tested for, but
those cared about
 The social complexity of the school as an ecosystem
 Understanding the different motivations and needs of stakeholders

5. FewofUsSee
theSchoolasa
System  We can see the surface – the “tip of the iceberg”
 But beneath this tip of the “iceberg” ecosystem are:
 Change and opportunity dynamics
 Resistance dynamics
 Expectations and performance dynamics
 The drama of the lives of students, teachers and leaders
 The failings of the school in terms of equity, performance and compassion
 Deviation dynamics – the exceptions, the “falling through the cracks”
challenges

6. ResilientandAdaptive
Schools

7. 7Characteristics
 Focus and alignment around a challenging key
purpose and challenge
 Optimism about being able to change and make a
difference
 Decisiveness – “no one else is coming” so “let’s get
it done”
 Integrity and a focus on quality experience and
outcomes
 Open Communication and a high degree of self-
organization / internal trust
 Collaboration up, down, sideways and outwards
 Empathy, Warmth and Genuineness shown
through compassion for all in the school –
students, teachers, colleagues, parents

8. Theydothis
workthrough
theseactions..
 Build and empower teacher teams..
 Build and empower supports for learners and
learning
 Enable the student voice to be heard
 Connect to others around the world: collaborate,
engage, adopt/adapt
 Focus, re-focus, and focus again on equity as an
ambition in terms of outcomes for all learners
 Never let a good crisis go to waste..
 Use “small data” to capture the nuances of their
work

9. Whichrequires
themto..
 Build a commitment to a common purpose and agreed outcomes.
Using evidence, dialogue and sharing of successes to show that the
agreed outcomes are not only possible, but have been achieved by
colleagues within the school.
 Value similarities and differences. Rather than seeking an
enmeshed and rigid sense of how to work on the schools, the
schools seeks to build it adaptive capacity by celebrating and
valuing differences and diversity.
 Listen and talk to build understanding. Some talk. Some listen.
Sometimes they do both. However, the key to the resilient school
is the search for understanding and meaning.
 Strive to achieve authentic, valued and meaningful outcomes for
each student of the school and each staff member. This is more
than a commitment to try to work towards common outcomes; this
is about finding the authentic voice for each teacher and student
so that their work and investment of energy is truly valued. The
key word here is “authentic” – the genuine pursuit of the inner
professional voice of the teacher to deliver support for the
students learning and personal / social development intentions

10. AdaptiveSchools
arenottheSameas
HighlyOrganized
Schools
 Machine like administration focused on predictability and reliability.
 Strong centralized control.
 Substantial policy and procedures formally administered.
 Directive leadership.
 Highly organized and regimented
 Safe and controlled
 Living organism that adapts to conditions daily, weekly, monthly.
 Teamwork dominates the methods of working.
 Patterns are recognized and responded to.
 Leadership is distributed, engaged and situational.
 Risk taking occurs within a context of care for others / Yet Safe
 Interdependent, dynamic.
 Highly Organized Schools
 Resilient / Adaptive School Ecosystems

11. SmallData–BigInsights

12. HowSmallData
GivesInsight–
MoreSmall
Observation
Opportunities
 Student voices and engagement
 Teacher-share and engagement
 Pupil Pursuit
 Systematic small scale, in school research (researcher in
residence)
 Adopt a “Student with Promise” (one who the school needs
to attend to…)
 Map Your Teaching Year (Highs, Lows) and the Learning..
 Walk the Hall and Listen and Chat…make notes
 Drop in Classrooms and Look
 Community focus groups
 Innovation Through Hands on Learning and Drop In to
Another Teachers Class

13. Equityanda
Changeof
Language
How changing language can change behaviour. A school used
to use the language of “students at risk” and sought to
encourage faculty identify students who were at risk. Few
faculty did so. But when they changed this ask to “identify
students with promise whose promise is unfilled” not only
did they get a much larger response, they also received a
great many suggestions from faculty about what an
appropriate response to the students need might be.

14. ContextShifting
How changing context can change outcomes. When a teacher gives a
context to some task or challenge then students see the task or
challenge in that context. Changing the context – for example, rather
than being a health care context it becomes the context for a new
video game – can change how the learner approaches this task. A
colleague did this – asked his class to create the rules for a new
battle game between conflicting parties and then showed them how
their rules for the battle were similar to the rules for a particular
legal process. “One class I wont forget in a hurry…”

15. Observingand
Change..
How observing peer groups can produce better group activities. A
teacher set three groups different versions of the same task – each
group had a different component of the same problem and the
“solution” required all three groups to realize that they needed to
share information between the groups if any one of them was to be
successful in solving the problem. Though she had not intended to
formally teach problem solving skills, she used the experience of the
group work to do so with the result that the next time she undertook
group activities all of her groups performed better, faster, smarter.

16. Innovationfrom
Observation
How close observation leads to innovation. In designing a new
approach to the design of a new program of studies, a small team
spent time discussing the hopes and ambitions or potential students
and realized two things: (a) the students were looking for far greater
flexibility and choice than existed in any other program available to
them – they were looking to “mix and match” their own program;
and (b) they wanted the opportunity to be flexible in how they
studied (some in-class, some online, some through intense but short
courses, some through projects).

17. 3Keystofor
SmallData
 Collaboration is the DNA of the Adaptive School -
Collaborative sharing of insights, observations and
practices – sharing small data – can lead to major
changes in what we teach and how we do so.
 Not Just a Story - move beyond anecdotes and look for
patterns. Anthropologists do this well – they study the
behaviour of groups and then discern the patterns in
this behaviour – rituals and routines - and then pay
attention to deviance.
 Think Like a Kindergarten Group - work
collaboratively, problem solving as you go, do lots of
prototyping until you find a workable solution and then
go for that solution with gusto.

18. ResilientCulturalEco-
SystemsHave..

19. Resilientand
AdaptiveSchools
BECAUSE THEY HAVE…
 Moved beyond coping and surviving
 Moved to understand their internal strengths and capacities
 Flaws and understand what they are – they are working to leverage
them, change them or live with them
 Diversity and leverage this diversity to gain strength and create
opportunities
 Energy for being better all the time
THEY ALSO HAVE..
 Distributed leadership
 Engaged staff and students and community members
 Constant innovation and change
 A collaborative professional learning environment
 Energy for the next thing..

20. Resilientand
AdaptiveSchools
Learn..
 Create an proactive, creative and innovative approach to the
unknown and the about to be…
 Engage and involve stakeholders, especially students and staff
 Build trust so that risks can be taken, failures learned from and
change is constant
 Move beyond coping to adaptation and transformation
 Inspire and motivate towards a common purpose: equity

21. Leadership

22. EquityasThe
Work
 Leaders Focus on: Equity:
 Working to ensure equality not just of access to learning,
but of outcomes from learning (all students are special
need students at some point) is a statement of equity
 Equity demands differentiated instruction and varied
design of learning as engaged experiences
 Learning outcomes are in part determined by external
factors (limits) and by internal factors (opportunities for
learning and innovation) – balancing these two so as to
achieve equity is a challenge for an eco-system
 Designs for learning which seek to leverage talents and
deliver skills are more inclusive than those which seek to
impose learning outcomes entirely driven by external
eco-system forces (e.g. high stakes tests of narrow skill
sets)

23. SchoolEco
System
“Success”
Leaders Work to Manage These Seven Ecosystem
Features
1. Baselines safety and security within the eco-system
of all components of that system
2. The extent of collaboration and the cohesiveness of
purpose for all actors in the system
3. Recognizing and reinforcing the different roles each
actor plays in the system as necessary for the
system – equity of roles
4. Rapid response to challenge, change or threat so as
to sustain the integrity of the ecosystem

24. 5. Effective absorption of new elements (students,
teachers, technology etc) into the eco-system so as to
sustain the eco-system as a culture over the medium
to long term
6. Integrated leadership at all levels of the system so
that the system is “intelligent” at all levels
7. Staying focused on what the eco-system is (a school)
and not morphing into a different system (a
knowledge factory, social work centre, health clinic).

25. The6Eco-
SystemWork
Sub-Systems
 The work of acceptance
 The work of engagement
 The work of learning
 The work of feedback
 The work of supporting those who cant and those who
wont
 The work of compassion and character

26. TheWorkof
Acceptance
 Key Task 1: Ensuring that all who are in the eco-
system feel that they belong in the eco-system and are
respected for being in that system
 Acceptance of new students, teachers and others
 Ensuring the safety of actors in the system
 Respecting differences
 Enabling self-organization collaborations and networks

27. TheWorkof
Engagement
 Key Task 2: Engaging all actors so that they develop a
sense of ownership of their place in the eco-system and
are challenged to “show” their talents create
opportunities for eco-system growth and outcomes.
 “Finding and developing talents and leveraging them in
the service of the system”
 Developing skills and competencies through collaborative
engagement
 Finding supports for the actor so as to sustain
engagement over time

28. TheWorkof
Learning
 Key Task 3: To enable the teacher/ student to engage in
deep, purposive and significant learning to which they
become committed.
 Finding meaning in learning
 Securing a focus on what matters most for the learning
to be undertaken
 Finding the right actors with the right “stuff” to enable
learning to take place – learning as a designed
experience
 Sustaining learning over time

29. TheWorkof
Feedback
 Key Task 4: Providing feedback so that the systems
are self-sustaining.
 Providing feedback to ensure acceptance and
engagement
 Providing feedback so as to facilitate learning as both an
experience and as outcomes
 Providing feedback to the eco-system about collaboration,
cohesion and the health of the ecosystem
 Providing early warnings for potential system fails

30. TheWorkof
Supporting Those
WhoCan’t and
thosewhoWon’t
 Key Task 5: Developing systems within the eco-system
for supporting those who are failing, feel they are
failing even though they are not, or who are resisting
the pressures of the ecosystem.
 Early identification of those in need of different actions
to support them
 Range of options for support – counselling, mentoring,
discipline, time out, time in deep

31. TheWorkof
Compassionand
Character
 Task 6: Building character through compassion,
mindful supports and challenge.
 Supporting all actors as persons through empathy,
warmth, genuineness and compassion
 Enabling teachers and learners not to have to act but to
be genuine
 Challenging teachers and learners to be all that they can
be – to be fully present
 Building the resilience of each teacher and each student,
not just the system as a whole

32. 5Observations
1. Measuring the parts tells us nothing about the
whole
2. Measuring the 6 work sub-systems is important, but
still does not tell us about the whole
3. The health of the eco-system as a whole and its
support from stakeholders is a pre-requisite to
measuring the efficacy of the 6 work systems
4. The key measure is of resilience and adaptive
capacity – all other measures are “rear view mirror
measures”
5. Predictive measures help us better plan appropriate
action and the best predictive measures are
acceptance, engagement and compassion/character.

33. ManyThanks  murgatroydstephen@gmail.com / @murgatroydsteph