Developing Leader – d) Leading Change - Primary Leadership Journey

By Phil Wickins posted 27-06-2024 10:16

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This is the 4th blog in the Developing Leader section of the Primary Computing Leadership Journey. Leading change in your school is covered in much more detail in the Leading Primary Computing – Module 2 course, in session 1. Click on the infographic below to navigate the other blogs in the series, more will be added as they are written:

02d Leading Change - Primary Leadership Pathway

Leading change in your school requires a carefully managed approach. We want to avoid knee jerk reactions, especially when we may be second guessing what Ofsted want, or we’ve seen something work in a school that may have a completely different context to ours. One example I have experienced recently was the sudden trend in senior leaders asking all subject leaders to demonstrate where disciplinary and substantive knowledge was taught in their subjects. I ended up writing a blog about what substantive and disciplinary knowledge are and why we don't need to worry about them in computing, to help show that it doesn’t apply to all subjects. Although it might appear neat and consistent if all subjects referenced it in their planning and other documents, it would be totally inappropriate.

This graphic really helps to explain the approach to leading change in a school:

We need to especially consider the response we will get from staff. It’s no use instigating change without the proper resources and procedures in place, as staff will resist or refuse, leading to a failed attempt that is very difficult to recover from.

One of the most common forms of change happening at the moment is the shift towards using the Teach Computing Curriculum, for which there is an excellent course on how to undertake: Implementing the Teach Computing Curriculum in your school. Different leadership techniques are required for this type of change for different schools and contexts. For example, if computing simply isn’t getting taught at all due to lack of resources or a curriculum that makes sense to teachers, then a clean slate can be the best approach. If a curriculum has become out of date but still feels ‘comfortable’ for teachers who have been using it for a while, then perhaps a phasing in approach would be best, where teachers can choose a unit from the TCC and teach it in place of a similar one in their current planning. Then feedback can be collected, tweaks made, changes rolled out while keeping everyone on board and relatively happy!

Have you rolled out a new initiative in school? How did it go? Was it a success? Let us know in the comments!

Next blog: Physical Computing
Previous blog: Enrichment

CQF: If you have signed up to complete the Computer Quality Framework, then any activity undertaken in this incremental section of the Leadership Journey would count towards to the 'Leadership and Vision' dimension of the CQF.

#LeadingPrimaryComputing #ComputingQualityFramework

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