Gregmeet – Just show me the gain!

Greg Whitby telling us that he doesn’t care how learners choose to do it, as long as they can “show him the gain”!

I was a guest of Learning and Teaching Scotland today at the quirkily named “gregmeet”. The eponymous gentleman is the “Executive Director of Schools and leads a system of approximately 80 Catholic schools serving the Catholic community of greater Western Sydney.” Greg is a visionary leader of learning and has been named in at least one award as “Australia’s most innovative educator”.

Greg was an easy and intimate presenter and so it was a pleasure as he took us through his philosophy of leading education in the Sydney area. (Despite his Catholic credentials, his thinking is quite universal and entirely about good learning). His Aussieness did break through in a number of charming ways and at least two of the B**** words interspersed his stories; he knows how to speak to a Glasgow audience.

Check Greg’s site and his thought provoking blog.

I took no notes, and so now five hours later, I thought it would be good to capture what has stayed with me as I have digested his message:

Overall, Greg was refreshingly in-line with a lot of good leadership theory that is influencing many of us at present. For example, he is scathing about rigid programmes; he prefers to define outcomes and to leave students and teachers to achieve these in their own way. Could Scottish education learn from this? My sense is that we are beginning to devolve that kind of creative control to teachers in little ways, but if we don’t like how they use it, we tend to control the agenda again.

Greg was solid on the view that teachers have to be learning professionals. He lambasted those wasters who were proud of their lack of academic reading in a manner that would have cheered one Brian Boyd, regular scourge of the non-reflective teacher. He suggested that they “find another sandpit to play in”! He went further though, stating that those who lead and those who comment-on and by implication monitor pedagogy should be in classrooms themselves. The challenge to the Scottish system here is clear, with teacher trainers, headteachers and my own Quality Improvement Officer colleagues in range of his critical arrows.

Greg had much to say about letting learners define their own preferred learning tools whether they be Facebook or their smartphones; Greg is clear that our obsession with laptops is not sufficient. He is also critical of overly controlling web filtering, although he is comfortable with filtering that stops the “real nasty stuff”. Again, we are all over the place on this question across Scotland. We certainly have no uniform pedagogy in terms of implementing the new web tools. Some authorities are progressive while others have “grey men in suits saying no to anything that hasn’t been ordered in advance on a teaching plan (triplicate signed)”. I think it’s time we had some national leadership on this based on progressive and evidence based thinking. How about it LTS? Where is your voice on this?

Timetables for learning along with the factory model of teaching by age were ridiculed in turn. Greg favours a future with learning-teams in schools. defining desired outcomes and arranging or brokering opportunities to attain what the learners need. He went even further than the usual proponents of this view by suggesting that the curricula once in place would inevitably lead to assessment, assessment timetables and teaching to the curriculum; he seemed to be suggesting that there is a lot of real-learning as part of the natural interaction between teachers and learners. Essentially his summary said that “schools are boring” and since surveys continue to tell us this, then he is annoyed that we continue to ignore what young people consistently tell us. Waken up to this he says, “before we lose relevance and in turn our influence”

Greg answered lots of questions which he tended to label as hard questions in his amusing way. The question I wanted to ask but didn’t as only a Scottish educator could have a worthwhile stab at an answer is:

“How many visionary leaders are driving our system forward here”? Answers anyone?