Shared vision : why teacher-designed schools experience real, positive and sustained change

Authors

B Martin, Bill Martin & Associates

Abstract

The aim of teacher-designed schools is to break down barriers of isolation and allow members of staff to combine their collective potential to grow one another and their students in powerful ways. The author assists teachers to uncover the shared vision, and the mental models that underpin it, that might shape their schools' systems and structures. A process to achieve this is described: gathering data which helps to design a set of draft inquiry probes; facilitating an inquiry probes workshop; three draft shared visions are written; staff then critique the draft vision statements and a summary of data collected from the inquiry probes workshop is used to prepare a second draft of the shared vision. Next, the staff identify the key vision achievement themes that will best shift the school from where it is currently to where it wants to be in the shared vision. They then form their preparation-for-action groups around these themes. This process changes the mental models of a school. The author works with schools by facilitating a process of self-diagnosis and self-prescription, followed by further and ongoing facilitated self-diagnosis and self-prescription in a continuous cycle. The process is about the intelligent and expert use of power. [Author abstract, ed]

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