Building Performance and Global Excellence in Independent and International Schools

Building Performance:
Developing a culture of deliberate,
targeted and intentional school improvement
Dr Philip SA Cummins
January 2015

Context: About Dr Phil
Teaching and working in and with schools since 1988
Presenter, Thought Leader, Consultant, Author, Textbook Writer, Syllabus
Writer, PhD in Australian History
Managing Director: CIRCLE – The Centre for Innovation, Research,
Creativity and Leadership in Education – supporting over 1,750 schools and
other organisations nationally and internationally
Adjunct Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Tasmania
phil@circle.education
www.circle.education
@CIRCLEcentral
+61 410 439 130

Is this me?
• "I know how to teach - I've been doing it for years”
• "Student results are in the hands of the students themselves - I just
can't control all of the variables and I don't really have that much
influence”
• "I like to focus on the craft of my teaching - I love PDs where I can get
something new I can use in my teaching tomorrow”
• "Good assessment tasks help us to mark and rank students accurately”
• "I like a nice orderly classroom where the rules are clear and I've got
enough time to cover all of the syllabus content”
• "I know what's best for my students and I break it down for them to help
them so they can work towards a goal”
• "I like to build strong, caring relationships that just focus on the
positives”
• "I find it best to keep the parents away from the classroom because ..."

In this workshop …
Building Performance – Culture
A leader… has to engage people in confronting the challenge, adjusting
their values, changing perspectives, and learning new habits.
RA Heifetz & DL Laurie, “The work of leadership”, HBR, 1997
1. Defining Performance: Context, Concepts, Frameworks and
Processes
2. Understanding Individual Performance: Appraisal, Evaluation,
Feedback and Goal-Setting

Part 1:
Defining School Performance
Context, Concepts,
Frameworks and Processes
January 2015

In This Part …
Defining School Performance
1. Building Performance: Concepts and Context
2. The CIRCLE School Improvement Framework
3. The 5 Ds: Identifying and Managing Performance

1. Building Performance:
Concepts and Context

Your views
What does performance mean?
How can we build performance?

What does building
performance mean?
Performance
Productivity?
Autonomy?
Results?
National
Testing?
Processes?
Goals
achieved?

The International Educational
Landscape
Data-informed research & practice
Teacher performance & professional development
Literacy & numeracy benchmarking
Continuous improvement
ICT in learning benchmarking
Standards-referenced curriculum
Formative assessment

Performance culture needs
National School Improvement Tool (Australian Commonwealth
Government 2013) provides 9 clear benchmark areas for all Australian
schools in pursuit of improved performance:
• An explicit improvement agenda
• Analysis and discussion of data
• A culture that promotes learning
• Targeted use of school data
• An expert teaching team
• Systematic curriculum delivery
• Differentiated teaching and learning
• Effective pedagogical practices
• School-community partnerships

Learning culture needs
• Student engagement: Promote student engagement with a focus on attendance, motivation, self-
belief, a disposition to learning, perseverance, problem-solving and performance, enhanced by
positive student-teacher relationships, equitable distribution of resources and less stratification of
students
• Teacher partnership in reform: Enable a relentless, practical focus on learning, and a strong culture of
teacher openness, research and learning
• Professional learning: Implement formal induction, feedback, professional development and mentoring
systems for all levels of teachers with systems that are primarily focused on improving student
outcomes
• Positive teaching climate: Promote teacher involvement in decision-making, the use of active teaching
practice, teacher cooperation and collaboration, and opportunities to improve teachers’ classroom
management
• Value-added educational measures: Track educational performance and provide the technology that
empowers this as a key focus of strategies to improve instruction and programs
• Distributed instructional leadership: Prepare teachers to enter school leadership through formal
training programs and support distributed school leadership and instructional leadership, especially in
building school professional learning plans, identifying and implementing essential outcomes for all
students, holding students, staff and parents accountable for outcomes, encouraging and coaching
teachers to use teaching strategies that improve educational outcomes for all students and assessing
student progress in important areas
• Improved accountability: Augment cultural change with increasing trend towards regulation in terms of
teacher qualifications, professional standards, conduct and behaviour
Grattan Institute (2012 ff), TALIS (2013), PISA (2013)

Technology-driven educational needs
• Education paradigms are shifting internationally to include online learning, hybrid learning
and collaborative models, social media is increasing its presence in all aspects of society
• The abundance of resources and relationships available because of new technologies is
compelling a fundamental rethink of the role of educators, while openness as a concept
and an expectation is changing perceptions of how education should function.
• Significant challenges to education include the increasing importance of ongoing
professional learning of staff, the constraining impact of institutional culture on adoption
of new technologies, the challenge to traditional educational modes and institutions
offered through technology as alternative sources of education, the requirement to blend
formal and informal modes of learning K-12 and the inadequacy of current technologies
to meet expectations relating to personalisation of learning
• Specific technologies include cloud computing, mobile technology and the use of
student-specific data to customise curricula and resources as a near horizon focus,
learning analytics and open content as a mid-horizon focus, and 3D printing and virtual
laboratories as far-term horizons, while Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is fast becoming
the preferred model for facilitation of devices and therefore requiring shifts in attitudes to
access and permissibility of smartphone technology
NMC Horizons (2014)

Independent school parent needs
• Good teachers and facilities
• Supportive, safe, stable, caring and disciplined
environment
• Educational excellence
• Reinforcement of moral values/faith basis/school
philosophy
• Smaller class sizes/individual attention
• Good principal/leadership
• Broad curriculum and co-curriculum
ISCA (2008)

Effective Teachers
What We’re Learning So Far:
• In every grade and subject, a teacher’s past track record of value-added is
among the strongest predictors of their students’ achievements in other classes
and academic years.
• Teachers with higher value-added on state tests tend to promote deeper
conceptual understanding as well.
• Teachers have higher effects on math achievement than on achievement in
reading or English Language Arts, at least as measured on state assessments.
• Student perceptions of a given teacher’s strengths and weaknesses are
consistent across the different groups of students they teach. Moreover,
students seem to know effective teaching when they see it … Most important
are students’ perceptions of a teacher’s ability to control a classroom and to
challenge students with rigorous work.
Gates Foundation, Initial Findings from the
Measures of Effective Teaching Project (2014)

Effective Teachers
7 C’s Assessment of Teachers by Students:
1. CARE: My teacher in this class makes me feel that he/she really cares about
me.
2. CONTROL: Our class stays busy and does not waste time
3. CLARITY: My teacher explains difficult things clearly
4. CHALLENGE: My teacher wants me to explain my answers—why I think what I
think.
5. CAPTIVATE: My teacher makes learning enjoyable.
6. CONFER: My teacher wants us to share our thoughts
7. CONSOLIDATE: My teacher takes the time to have the students summarize
what we learn each day.
Ron Ferguson, Harvard University from the
Measures of Effective Teaching Project (2014)

Highly Accomplished Teachers
• Highly Accomplished teachers are recognised as highly effective, skilled classroom
practitioners and routinely work independently and collaboratively to improve their own
practice and the practice of colleagues. They are knowledgeable and active members of
the school.
• Highly Accomplished teachers contribute to their colleagues' learning. They may also
take on roles that guide, advise or lead others. They regularly initiate and engage in
educational discussions about effective teaching to improve the educational outcomes
for their students.
• They maximise learning opportunities for their students by understanding their
backgrounds and diverse individual characteristics and the impact of those factors on
their learning. They provide colleagues, including pre-service teachers, with support and
strategies to create positive and productive learning environments.
• Highly Accomplished teachers have in-depth knowledge of subjects and curriculum
content within their sphere of responsibility. They model sound teaching practices in their
teaching areas. They work with colleagues to plan, evaluate and modify teaching
programs to improve student learning. They keep abreast of the latest developments in
their specialist content area or across a range of content areas for generalist teachers.
AITSL Standards 2014

Highly Accomplished Teachers
• Highly Accomplished teachers are skilled in analysing student assessment
data and use it to improve teaching and learning.
• They are active in establishing an environment that maximises professional
learning and practice opportunities for colleagues. They monitor their own
professional learning needs and align them to the learning needs of students.
• They behave ethically at all times. Their interpersonal and presentation skills
are highly developed. They communicate effectively and respectfully with
students, colleagues, parents/carers and community members.
AITSL Standards 2014

Expert teachers
1. Expert teachers can identify essential representations of their subject
• Expert teachers have deeper representations about teaching and learning.
• Expert teachers adopt a problem-solving stance to their work.
• Expert teachers can anticipate, plan, and improvise as required by the
situation.
• Expert teachers are better decision-makers and can identify what decisions are
important and which are less important decisions.
2. Expert teachers can guide learning through classroom interactions
• Expert teachers are proficient at creating an optimal classroom climate for
learning.
• Expert teachers have a multi-dimensionally complex perception of classroom
situations.
• Expert teachers are more context-dependent and have high situation cognition.
John Hattie, Teachers Make a Difference (2003)

Expert teachers
3. Expert teachers can monitor learning and provide feedback
• Expert teachers are more adept at monitoring student problems and assessing their level
of understanding and progress, and they provide much more relevant, useful feedback.
• Expert teachers are more adept at developing and testing hypotheses about learning
difficulties or instructional strategies.
• Expert teachers are more automatic.
4. Expert teachers can attend to affective attributes
• Expert teachers have high respect for students.
• Expert teachers are passionate about teaching and learning.
5. Expert teachers can influence student outcomes
• Expert teachers are passionate about teaching and learning.
• Expert teachers provide appropriate challenging tasks and goals for students.
• Expert teachers have positive influences on students’ achievement.
• Expert teachers enhance surface and deep learning.
John Hattie, Teachers Make a Difference (2003)

Hattie’s mindframes for expertise
• My fundamental task is to evaluate the effect of my teaching on
students’ learning and achievement.
• The success and failure of my students’ learning is about what I do or
don’t do. I am a change agent.
• I want to talk more about learning than teaching.
• Assessment is about my impact.
• I teach through dialogue not monologue.
• I enjoy the challenge and never retreat to “doing my best”.
• It’s my role to develop positive relationships in class and staffrooms.
I inform all about the language of learning.
http://visible-learning.org/2014/08/john-hattie-mind-frames-teachers/

Professional Development is about acquiring and testing the knowledge base for teaching
doing
understanding
competent
incompetent
consciousunconscious
conscious competence
unconsious incompetence
From „unconscious incompetence“ to „conscious competence“
Towards conscious competence
Dr Michael Day, TDA, 2011

Developing and deepening the teacher’s body of
knowledge through working with others, research
and enquiry
Tacit knowledge derived from school context
Detailed, concrete, integrated context specific knowledge - ‘craft of teaching’,
mentoring, diagnostic skills including AfL
ITT
Core knowledge
and
basic teaching skills
Induction
Deepening teaching skills
through testing knowledge
in classroom context and
peer group reflection
Continuing Professional development
Deepening body of
knowledge through study of
research on professional
areas, and participation in
research projects
Researching impact of
CPD on pupil performance
QTS
Induction
standards
Research derived professional knowledge
Public, sharable, storable and accessible, generalisable, verifiable
and improvable knowledge
Dr Michael Day, TDA, 2011

Is this us?
“As professionals, teachers need to engage in reflective practice to critically think
about their skills and knowledge, access professional development for
improvement and become an active member of learning communities to meet their
professional needs.”
Teacher Educator, New South Wales AITSL Validation Survey 2,
8 October to 5 November 2010

Is this us?
“There is now little or no doubt that schooling is improved when teachers
collectively examine new conceptions about teaching, question ineffective
practices and actively support each other’s professional growth.”
J Fleming & E Kleinhenz, Towards a moving school,
Developing a professional learning and performance culture (2007)

Aligning systems of
trust and research
School leaders’ strategies and personal characteristics
contribute significantly to their sense of empowerment and
success:
1. Trust in teachers is the most important factor, especially
when built through encouraging teacher autonomy, input
and innovation
2. Action research projects and shared governance and
decision-making build relationships, motivation and trust
and enhances outcomes
J Blase & J Blase, The Micropolitical Orientation of
Facilitative School Principals and its Effects on Teachers’
Sense of Empowerment (1997)

Find your champions:
Your school’s own knowledge laboratory
Epochal historical events have determined that the laboratory, not the
monastery, will continue to dominate the life of learning. Other late-
twentieth century trends, like the democratization and commercialization
of knowledge, are now pressuring existing institutions to meet the
demands of a knowledge society. Above all, the ascendancy of the
laboratory is reshaping the basic mission of other institutions, pushing
some towards obsolescence, giving others a new lease on life.
Ian F McNeely with Lisa Wolverton, Reinventing Knowledge, From
Alexandra to the Internet, WW Norton & Co, 2008

The CIRCLE
Leadership
Capability
Framework
Leadership through
values &
relationships,
authenticity,
transformation,
sustainability, service
Leadership in
action
Leadership
style
Team culture
Discipline
Vision
Communication
skills
Problem-
solving and
decision-
making
Resolving
conflict
Understanding
and managing
change

Leadership for expertise
• Be an active leader. Demonstrate the character, competence, drive and passion for
responsibility to lead by example. Enact suitable, practical and sustainable leadership
principles to meet team, task and individual needs and goals.
• Develop a range of leadership styles. Use a variety of appropriate and personal styles to
support the achievement of desired outcomes. Motivate and engage team members
effectively.
• Build the right team culture. Demonstrate team values and cultivate the right team
attitude. Create a team culture that supports the desired ethos and enables the preferred
strategy.
• Be disciplined. Model high standards of personal and professional discipline, especially
in the face of adversity. Enhance team members’ self-discipline and collective discipline
to achieve high standards.
• Use far-sighted vision and clear goals. Set direction, build the team and design its
supporting structures. Translate vision into action through positive leadership that
continually interpreting, reviewing and reinforcing the team vision.

Leadership for expertise
• Communicate well and often. Use a wide variety of effective communication to motivate,
influence and direct the team. Align the team and community to the desired vision,
promote the team’s credibility, and enhance the viability of achieving the team’s goals.
• Solve problems and make decisions. Equip yourself with a range of appropriate decision-
making models that help you to make timely decisions that meet the desired object and
successfully manage the stress and risk associated with the decision. Ensure that you
consult team members appropriately in making decisions.
• Resolve conflict. Develop expertise in using different methods to resolve conflict. Use
suitable techniques to bring individuals and groups to short-term agreement and improve
long-term working relationships.
• Understand and harness change. Bring about change in an intentional, goal-oriented and
purposeful way. Employ effective processes and strategies to overcome resistance,
enhance learning and maintain team cohesiveness.

Motivation and engagement
Dan Pink, Drive, 2009 – 3 aspects for engaging and motivating people:
• Mastery: a feeling of control over the content and competencies of your
role
• Autonomy: a feeling that you are equipped, empowered and enabled to
make the key decisions that affect the nature and outcomes of your
work
• Purpose: a feeling that you are engaged in a noble pursuit that is
contributing to a greater good
MUST HAVE ALL 3 OF THESE IN PLACE
TO ENSURE HIGH LEVELS OF
ENGAGEMENT AND PERFORMANCE

Daniel Goleman on
motivation and leadership
Almost all effective leaders have motivation, a variety of self-management they
mobilize their positive emotions to drive them towards their goals and achieving
beyond expectations. They key word here is “achieve”. People who are motivated
to achieve like to be stretched yet balance external self-awareness with internal
motivation effectively. They have a passion for the work, seek out creative
challenges, love to learn and take great pride in a job well done. They have great
energy, often seem restless with the status quo and are eager to explore new
approaches to their work, especially with identifying better ways to track progress.
They are forever raising the performance bar, like to keep score, especially by
using clear, hard measures. They remain optimistic even when the score is against
them and their self-regulation combines with achievement motivation to overcome
the frustration and depression that come after a setback or failure.
Adapted from http://www.danielgoleman.info/daniel-goleman-traits-of-a-motivated-leader-2/

Your views
How can data help improve performance in
the school setting?
Why?

Provocation: Are we confident in the
evidence basis of our own leadership?
• The ability of school leaders and administrators to use data to inform
practice has become a requirement of such positions.
• Several studies suggest that leaders and administrators often do not
feel confident in using data, or often use it inefficiently or incorrectly.
Marsh et al, ‘Making Sense of Data Based
Decision Making in Education’ 2006
Wolstetter et al ‘Creating a System for Data-Driven Decision-Making:
Applying the Principal-Agent Framework’ 2008;
Spillain ‘Conceptualising the Data-Based
Decision-Making Phenomena’ 2012)

Why use data?
• The research says that data can best be used in schools and systems:
• To lessen achievement gaps by targeting groups with the greatest need
• To highlight the professional learning needs of teachers
• To allow a ‘proactive approach’ to curriculum design and development
• To measure parent, student, staff and community satisfaction, especially with
the learning environment
• To give authority to decisions made by leaders and diminish perceptions that
such decisions are made based on emotions or assumptions
• To share best practices within and across schools
• To promote individual and groups accountability
• To enable schools to communicate more effectively with the media and with the
public
• To motivate students by identifying a student’s specific weakness in a particular
subject area, promote greater involvement and report back to parents
Marsh et al 2006; White Paper, Data-Driven Decision Making: A Powerful
Tool for School Improvement, Minneapolis. Sagebrush Corporation, 2004

CIRCLE’s 7 principles of evidence-
based leadership in schools
1. Mission alignment: Understand your purpose and concentrate your
activity on this goal; don’t spread your resources too widely.
2. Open inquiry: Ask good questions; don’t expect a particular outcome.
3. Dynamic explication and experimentation: Define your processes, test
and iterate; don’t lock things down too soon.
4. Wise measurement: Use grand school averages and value-added
models; avoid benchmarks where possible.
5. Contextualised interpretation: Analyse data by finding patterns that tell
the real story; don’t let data speak for itself.
6. Balanced judgment: Temper data with intuition.
7. Collaborative improvement: Use the findings to help engage all
members of the community to construct better outcomes for more
learners.

Planning Performance
Planning school performance
Setting operational goals and KPIs
Planning individual performance
Monitoring and measuring school
and individual performance

What are the barriers to improving
performance and implementing performance
building activities in schools you are familiar
with?

Your take-aways
One thing:
• You know more about
• You feel more confident about
• You might use at your school tomorrow
• You might think about carefully for a long time before using
at your school

2. The CIRCLE School
Improvement Framework

Your views
How can we use frameworks to help us to
build performance in the school setting?
Why?

Do we understand the importance of
frameworks in analysing how schools
work?
Theoretical, conceptual and practical frameworks are like the scaffolding
builders use to repair buildings which allow the builder to focus on those
aspects of the building most in need of work.
Lester, ‘On the Theoretical, Conceptual and Philosophical Foundations for
Research in Mathematics Education’ 1995
Having a framework helps to build a structure of ‘justification’ rather than
a structure of ‘explanation’.
Eisenhart, ‘Conceptual Frameworks for Research’ 1991

The CIRCLE
School
Framework
School
leadership:
For others, for
change, for life, for
real
Achievement:
Leadership in
action, leadership
style
Relationships:
Team culture,
Conflict resolution
Communications:
Communication,
Vision
Initiatives:
Understanding &
managing change,
Problem-solving &
decision-making
Reputation: Team
culture, Discipline

Our shared educational mission
Students should:
• Become expert independent learners who set and achieve relevant,
progressive and attainable goals
• Work in relationships of interdependent collaboration with their peers,
teachers, families and communities
• Communicate effectively within and about their learning and leadership
• Participate in initiatives and programs that enable them to rehearse for
a life of meaningful contribution, learning and service others
• Earn a reputation for being passionately engaged in challenging,
substantive and rewarding learning

Staff should:
• Set and achieve goals as part of a professional growth plan
• Work through relationships in teams and in community as part of our
professional learning and development programs
• Promote a meaningful Communication CHARTER – constructive,
honest, accountable, responsible, transparent, engaging, relevant
• Contribute to deliberate, targeted and intentional initiatives that
enhance their career trajectories
• Earn a professional reputation for mastery of curriculum, competency
of pedagogy, professional growth, leadership of learning and
commitment to a shared school culture

Leaders should:
• Lead the achievement of good results through effective leadership in
action and a contextualised personal leadership style
• Promote good relationships through their management of team culture
and conflict resolution
• Demonstrate leadership vision and articulate this through superior
communication
• Plan for, implement and evaluate initiatives through change
management, problem-solving and decision-making capabilities
• Build good reputations that enhance our shared reputation through
team discipline

School Improvement Domains
Improved culture and practice should be reflected in tangible evidence of
change in:
• Achievement: How we will improve achievement across all areas of the
school community, especially for our students – learning, leadership,
service, sport and co-curricular.
• Relationships in our community: How we will build and nurture our
important relationships – students, staff, parents, Board, alumni,
broader community members.
• Communication: How we will communicate among our community
members and to others about what we are doing and how we are
going.
• School initiatives: How we will implement what we see as the most
important programs that will benefit our community.
• The school’s reputation: How we will care for and promote the school’s
identity within and external to our community.

Key Questions for the CIRCLE School
Improvement Domains
5 simple questions to ask of anything in a school – a person,
a program, a community:
1. Achievement: Do we achieve good results?
2. Relationships in our community: Do we have good
relationships?
3. Communication: Do we communicate well?
4. School initiatives: Do we plan for, conduct and evaluate
initiatives well?
5. The school’s reputation: Do we have a good reputation?

Evaluation Criteria
5 simple questions to ask of CIRCLE’s 5 School Improvement
Domains:
1. Outcomes: Do we achieve what we set out to achieve with
our performance?
2. Processes: Do we use the best teaching and learning,
research and development, information recording and
tracking, evaluation and decision-making, and resourcing
and other business processes in our operations?
3. Community Engagement: Do we engage with and satisfy
our community’s expectations?
4. Ethos: Do we enhance our school’s ethos and values?
5. Strategic Intent: Are we aligned with and contributing to
our strategic intent?

CIRCLE’s 5 School Improvement Framework:
how we make sense of who we are
and what we do in schools
WHATPEOPLEWANT
WHATPEOPLENEED
WHATWEPROMISE
WHATWEDELIVER
ACHIEVEMENT
RELATIONSHIP
S
COMMUNICATIONS
INITIATIVES
REPUTATION

3. The 5Ds: Identifying
and Managing Performance

Your views
What type of process can help us to improve
performance across a whole school?
Why?

How Can We Best Identify and Manage
Our School’s Performance?
Key Questions
The CIRCLE Discovery Process:
– Discover: What do we know about our performance and
culture?
– Diagnose: What key patterns and trends can we
observe from the data?
– Decide: What should we do?
– Direct: What strategies can we use to do this well?
– Deploy: How are we going to get there?

Discovery
• Achievement: Do we achieve good results?
– Focus on our learning, leadership, service, sport and co-curricular.
• Relationships in our community: Do we have good relationships:
– Focus on students, staff, parents, Board, alumni, broader community members.
• Communication: Do we communicate well?
– Focus on how we communicate among our community members and to others
about what we are doing, why we are doing this and how well we are doing.
• School initiatives: Do we plan for implement and evaluate our initiatives
well?
– Focus on how well we implement what we see as the most important programs that
will benefit our community.
• Reputation: Do we have a good reputation?
– Focus on how we as individuals and a community will care for and promote the
school’s identity internally and externally, aligning individual and collective
reputation.

Discovery
• Outcomes: Do we do what we set out to do?
– Focus on our learning, leadership, service, sport and co-curricular results in
particular, as well as key financial and business outcomes.
• Processes: Do use the best available processes?
– Focus on teaching and learning, research and development, information recording
and tracking, evaluation and decision-making, and resourcing and other business
processes .
• Community Engagement: Have we engaged with and satisfied our
community’s expectations?
– Focus on testing assumptions and anecdote against key data.
• Ethos: Have we enhanced our school’s ethos and values?
– Focus on alignment of stated and unstated culture.
• Strategic Intent: Are we aligned with and contributing to our strategic
intent?
– Focus on relationship of action to strategic planning.

Discovery
When we ask questions, we use …
• A 5 question tool (for the whole community)
• A 10 question tool (for staff and other stakeholders)
• A 25 question tool (for Executive and Board)
• A 125 question tool (for data junkies and specific review)
These are organised by domains and criteria of the
CIRCLE School Framework.
We try to keep it very, very simple.

The CIRCLE School Discovery
Report Card
Achievement Relationships Comms Initiatives Reputation
Outcomes 3.6 4.5 2.4 3.6 4.1
Processes 4 4 2.5 3.2 4.5
Community
Engagement
3.5 4.2 2.3 3.8 3.9
Ethos 3.8 4.3 2.0 3.5 3.4
Strategic Intent 3.9 4.1 2.8 3.7 3.6

Standards-Referenced Evaluation
• We use a series of established standards to describe desirable
attainment across the 5 domains and the 5 criteria of the CIRCLE
Educational Framework.
• These standards can be used in full or in a selected fashion to identify
holistic or targeted performance.
• Each of the questions of the 125 question Discovery tool is linked to a
specific standard and stakeholders are asked to indicate a level of
agreement on a 6 point Likert scale:
1. Well below expectation
2. Below expectation
3. Sometimes meets expectation
4. Meets expectation
5. Above expectation
6. Well above expectation

Standards:
Community
Engagement

Culture Capture
• What characterises us?
– Focus on identity
• What do we want to become?
– Focus on aspiration
• What’s the best way to get there?
– Focus on broad agency and strategy
• What works for us?
– Focus on cultural strengths
• What doesn’t work for us?
– Focus on cultural weaknesses
• How will we know when we get there?
– Focus on standards, milestones and benchmarks

Framing + Focusing
For each key concept identified from Culture Capture:
• How do we connect to this concept?
– Focus on context, current relationships and strategies
• How might we nurture this concept?
– Focus on potential methods for strengthening these connections
• What challenges do we face in connecting to this concept?
– Focus on opportunities, threats, targets and barriers that we need to prepare for
• What might we do differently in relation to this concept?
– Focus on change, change management and building a learning community to help
with the necessary transitions

3 Things to Take Away about the Data
Gathering Process
1. Honour the process: Ask the same questions every time
and build them in to the processes of the whole school.
2. Keep it simple: Complicated dashboards work for a
handful of us; just about anyone in your school can
understand a simple matrix that is used again and again.
3. Framework = alignment: Linking everything to a common
framework provides the alignment we need.

Part 2:
Understanding Individual Performance
Appraisal, Evaluation, Feedback
and Goal-Setting
January 2015

In this Part …
1. Models of Appraisal
2. CIRCLE’s Evaluation and Goal-Setting Process

The school leader’s learning journey
Teacher evaluation is essential for improving both individual
performance and collective school outcomes.
Asia Society Partnership for Global Learning,
2011 Conference Report

The Appraisal Process
Performing:
Actioning
agreed goals
Reviewing:
Assessing actual
performance against
standard
Planning:
Agreeing on
performance
required

Your views
How effective do you think appraisal systems
are in the school setting?
Why?

How might we characterise
appraisal?

How others think we might we
characterise appraisal
• Fear: appraisal = getting sacked,
being found wanting
• Performance
• Review
• Evaluation
• Development
• Affirmation of good practice
• Action research
• Goals
• Future orientation
• Yuck
• Hidden agenda
• Summative or formative?
• Fixed mindset or growth
mindset?
• Improvement
• Enrichment
• Supportive
• Empowering
• Growth
• Cookie-cutter

Successful appraisal means …
• Framing appraisal in the context of established practices, educational
objectives and culture
• Defining specific purposes for appraisal
• Clarifying the responsibilities of all involved in the process
• Situating teacher appraisal within a whole-school approach to
evaluation and review
• Establishing meaningful standards and evaluation criteria
• Training evaluators to appraise and teachers to be appraised
Paulo Santiago and Francisco Benavides, Teacher Evaluation: A
Conceptual Framework and Examples of Country Practices,
OECD, 2009

What are we trying to achieve
with appraisal?

• Better student outcomes
• Marks
• Improvement
• Develop collegiality
• Student and staff engagement
• Own satisfaction
• Better at our jobs
• Whole school improvement
• Better learning
• Growth
What others think we might be
trying to achieve with appraisal

What others think we might be
trying to achieve with appraisal
• Continuous improvement aligned with the organisational
goals
• Outcomes based on this
• Affirmation of good practice
• Clarification of individual goals
• Facilitating people’s PD directions and opportunities
• Remuneration and status
• Promotional opportunities

Improving student outcomes
The over-arching policy objective is to ensure that
teacher evaluation contributes to the improvement of
student outcomes through enhanced teaching
performance and improved teaching practices
Paulo Santiago and Francisco Benavides, Teacher
Evaluation: A Conceptual Framework and Examples
of Country Practices,
OECD, 2009

Building teacher performance by
building capacity
The greatest impact on improving school and teacher
performance comes from measures that are designed to build
capacity as well as increase accountability. Of these two
qualities, it is capacity-building that is more likely to lead to
outstanding performance. Accountability is necessary but it is
not of the highest importance
Michael Fullan, Strong Performers and Successful
Reformers: Lessons from PISA, 2011

What’s the best way to get there with
appraisal?

• Cycle of reflective practice
• Need to revisit strategic plan; clearly defined goals and
vision/foundation
• Clear markers along the way
• Equip people to do I – develop people’s capacity
• Promote conversations in departments
• Build key agents for change – the 25% and the next group
• Build a continual positive discourse and associated relationships
• Be positive, market it and build trust
• Work on getting staff on board – get alongside and tweak culture not
wholesale change at once
What others think might be the best
way to get there with appraisal

What others think might be the best
way to get there with appraisal
• Action research programs: Self-assessment and peer
review; Self-directed goals affirmed by Head of School;
Improvement criteria; Presented back to peers; mid-year to
end of year cycle over 18 months; generate enthusiasm to
renew
• Regular chats; relation to PD goals; formative in approach;
little public relationship
• Process: Focus on internal motivation; conversation about
formative; summative outcomes not punitive outcomes;
transparency

Appraisal System Design
What works best is a decentralized approach
– individual schools rather than systems are
best placed to design and administer
meaningful and effective appraisal for
teachers
Ben Jensen, Better Teacher Appraisal and
Feedback: Improving Performance (Grattan
Institute, 2011)

Integration into the whole-school
context
• Professional development should aim to move teachers on
a continuum from incompetence to competence and from
unconscious to conscious practice.
• The ideal of conscious competence can be achieved by a
deepening of the teacher’s body of knowledge through
working with others, research and enquiry
• Importance of rich, meaningful data
Michael Day, TDA Approaches to
Improving Teacher Training,
OECD, 2011

What others think works with
appraisal
• Small, often planned, achieveable, transparent
• Work from strengths and pre-existing achievements – 5:1
ratio
• Observing an expert
• Having a range of criteria that you are assessing
• Having a valid instrument that people take seriously
• Having a written record to work from
• Working through with people we trust
• Setting goals to enhance strengths and address
weaknesses

Balanced design
Designing effective teacher-evaluation systems requires
careful balancing of the objectives of improvement and
accountability, discriminating selection of criteria, and the
training of evaluators. Whatever approach is taken, the
criteria against which teachers are evaluated need to be very
clear and perceived as fair.
Report from the Asia Society
Partnership for Global Learning’s 2011 conference
Improving Teacher Quality Around the World:
The International Summit on the Teaching Profession

Instruments to achieve
meaningful feedback
• Student performance and assessments
• Peer observation and collaboration
• Direct observation of classroom teaching and learning
• Student surveys and feedback
• 360-degree assessment and feedback
• Self-assessment
• Parent surveys and feedback
• External observation
Ben Jensen, Better Teacher Appraisal and Feedback: Improving
Performance (Grattan Institute, 2011)

What doesn’t work with
appraisal?

What other think doesn’t work
with appraisal
• Narrow view point of what you are being appraised in
• Public feedback – lack of confidentiality
• Assessor walking in with a preconceived idea
• Using a tool for purposes for which it was not designed
• When teachers are not motivated for growth
• Ignoring people’s individuality and context
• Culture of shame or culture of ego
• Appraisal without dialogue
• The word appraisal
• One hit per year and nothing in between – “annual review”
• Using the wrong tool

What the research shows about
current approaches to appraisal
• Teacher effectiveness is not identified in schools
• Teacher quality is not recognised in schools
• Teacher innovation is not recognised in schools
• Teacher evaluation has few consequences
• Teacher evaluation does not develop teaching in
classrooms
• Teacher evaluation is largely just an administrative
exercise
Ben Jensen, Better Teacher Appraisal and Feedback:
Improving Performance (Grattan Institute, 2011)

What Australian teachers say
about current appraisal systems
• 63% of teachers report that appraisals of their work are done purely to
meet administrative requirements
• 91% say the best teachers do not receive the most recognition and
reward
• 71% say that poor-performing teachers in their school will not be
dismissed.
• Instead, assessment and feedback are largely tick-a-box exercises not
linked to better classroom teaching, teacher development or improved
student results
Ben Jensen, Better Teacher Appraisal and Feedback: Improving
Performance (Grattan Institute, 2011)

How will you know when you’ve
got there with appraisal?

How other think you will know when you’ve
got there with appraisal
• People aren’t afraid of the word “appraisal”
• Staff are inspired by the process, engage with it and “get it”
• Quantitative improvement can be identified
• When conversations are more about teaching and pedagogy than
funny stories about kids
• When the students notice improvement
• When you have confident staff who have mastery over their subject
and are able to do their job – when teachers thrive and their wellbeing
improves and they collaborate more effectively
• When staff seek appraisal to help them work through problems in a
coaching situation to become more effective
• When goals are met
• When students and parents change their perception of teachers in the
College and its academic reputation as evidenced by feedback

Successful Appraisal Means …
Embedded & whole school approach
Clear purpose, structure & roles
Meaningful criteria
Constructive approach – regular
feedback

Common models of appraisal
Management by Objectives
Balanced Scorecard
360° Feedback
Behaviourally Anchored Rating Scales
Ranking methods

2. CIRCLE’s Evaluation and
Goal-Setting Process

The school leader’s learning journey
A process of becoming better instructional leaders through
the right processes for development of our capacity, that is,
initial training, induction and continuing professional
development, including mentoring and cluster professional
development support structures.
Philip SA Cummins, Autonomous schools in
Australia: Not ‘if’ but ‘how’, 2012

Professional Evaluation, Goal-Setting
and Growth Planning
Initiation
Gathering
Data: Self-
Reflection,
Observation,
Students
Shared
Reflection
and
Evaluation
Professional
Growth Plan
Ongoing
Review and
Reflection

THE PROCESS PHASE
1. Meeting One: Agreeing The Process
Teacher and coach meet to agree on process.
The teacher then completes and forwards to
the coach:
 Teacher Self-Reflection Statement
 Assessment of Teacher Professional
Standards
Both the coach and the supervisor complete
the ratings section of the Assessment of
Teacher Professional Standards.

Initiation
• Simple and clear
• Focused on process
• Clear on time frames – 2 weeks
• Careful not to go beyond the “snapshot”
• Introduces roles

Topics
 Purpose
 Structure of the Process
 Who will be involved
 What each person does in the process
 What are the desired outcomes

Roles
• The teacher
• The coach
• The supervisor
• The students
• The principal

The Coach
In the evaluation and goal setting process,
plays an important role of assisting participants
to realise potential and amplify performance for
the benefit of all involved.
In the evaluation and goal setting relationship,
the Coach plays the role of the critical and
constructive friend with the intention of
developing specific skills and knowledge that
over time will enhance personal growth.

The Appraisee and the Coach
both have an opportunity to develop their
professional practice through this process

The Coach
 Is another school leader
The Supervisor
 Is a staff member’s direct line manager

Gathering data
• Self-reflection based on domains –
importance of using evidence to turn
assertions into reality
• Student survey and lesson observation
based on attributes
• Shared teacher, coach and supervisor
evaluation of performance based on AITSL
standards

Analysing data
• Seek to gain baseline data
• Identify clear patterns and trends
• Beware the harsh or soft assessor!
• Focus on areas of strength first and
foremost
• Don’t duck the obvious areas for
development
• Separate analysis from solution in the
process

CIRCLE’s School Framework
LEADERSHIP:
For real,
For change,
For life,
For others
ACHIEVEMENT:
Knowledge and
understanding, leading
teaching and learning,
leading improvement
innovation and
change; leadership in
action, leadership style
RELATIONSHIPS:
Personal qualities –
social and
interpersonal skills,
developing self and
others; team culture,
conflict resolution
COMMUNICATIONS
: Personal qualities –
social and
engaging and working
with the community;
leadership vision and
communication
INITIATIVES:
Vision and values,
leading improvement,
innovation and
change; understanding
and managing change,
problem solving and
decision-making
REPUTATION:
Personal qualities –
social and
developing self and
others; team culture
and discipline

CIRCLE’s Non Teaching Staff
Competency Framework

DATA COLLECTION PHASE
2. Student Surveys & Lesson Observations
Lesson observations take place within the
next week, during which:
 The students complete Student Survey –
ideally in the last five minutes of the
lesson.
 The coach is the only person to complete
Observation Notes for each lesson
(except in the case of non-teaching staff).
3. Review of Data
The coach collates and reviews:
 Teacher Self-Reflection Statement
 Assessment of Teacher Professional
Standards
 Student Surveys
 Observation Notes

GOAL SETTING PHASE
4. Meeting Two: Review & Goal Setting
The teacher and coach meet face to face to
review collated data and documentation.
The teacher then considers the goals arising
and takes away the Teacher Goal Setting
Statement to complete.
5. Meeting Three: Goal Setting Sign Off
Teacher and coach meet to agree on
collated data and Teacher Goal Setting
Statement.

Smart Goals
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Time bound

Smart Goals
Specific – clear and unambiguous
Measurable – quantifiable
Attainable – possible to accomplish
Relevant – to your role within the school
Time bound – when will this be done

REVIEW & COMPLETION PHASE
6. Termly Goal Review Meetings
The teacher and coach meet once per term
to review progress of Teacher Goal Setting
Statement.
7. Completion
The process is completed when teacher and
coach have met to sign off on collated data
and have created a mutually agreed goal
setting review.
The supervisor and the Principal or their
Nominee review the completed
documentation and write to the teacher and
coach to sign off on review.

And for Non-Teaching Staff
Members …

Processes
• Meetings
• Setting goals
• Reviews
• “Difficult” conversations

In this part …
1. Models of Appraisal
2. CIRCLE’s Evaluation and Goal-Setting Process

Remember that when you leave this earth, you can take with
you nothing that you have received…only what you have
given: a full heart enriched by honest service, love, sacrifice,
and courage.
Francis of Assisi

Dr Phil Cummins
phil@circle.education
www.circle.education
@CIRCLEcentral
+61 410 439 130

Building Performance and Global Excellence in Independent and International Schools

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