uLead 2016

Join Simon Breakspear alongside 3 highly effective change leaders to unpack what it ‘really’ takes to lead deep pedagogical change. This engaging and highly practical session will: 

• Unpack a model of agile school improvement that is having impact around the world despite complexity and resistance 
• Ground the model in real-world case studies of change occurring in three diverse school contexts: Sydney Australia, Mumbai India and Edmonton Canada. 
• Apply these emerging change lessons to your own context

 

Each day, the average Canadian student aged 8 to 18 years spends approximately seven hours and 45 minutes in front of some sort of screen, such as a smartphone, tablet, television or computer. Researchers from the Alberta Teachers’ Association, Harvard Medical School, University of Alberta, and Boston Children’s Hospital are engaged in a comprehensive and long-term analysis of the impact of digital technologies on Alberta children and youth’s health, development and learning. The primary goal of this provincial research, entitled Growing Up Digital (GUD) Alberta, is to study the scope of physical, mental and social consequences of digital technologies in areas such as exercise, homework, identity formation, distraction, cognition, learning, nutrition and sleep quality/quantity. In this session, Dr. McRae will explore the findings from the first year of this study, and share the themes emerging from the thousands of questions posed by Alberta teachers and school leaders about how technologies are actively (re)shaping our society and learning ecosystems.

 

Join Simon Breakspear as he leads a ‘learn-by-doing’ practical session to enable you to have a greater impact on teaching and learning in your unique context. You will be guided through a structured process to reflect on your own improvement efforts and create a ‘roadmap’ for agile action over the coming 6-months. You will clarify your vision for learning, simplify your strategy and accelerate your impact. 

 Much of our current educational discourse is preoccupied with important operational issues: how do we organize our school system, who should run it, why do we emphasise testing and accountability? How do we teach and how do we weave ICT into our modern education? We are preoccupied with how do get to our destination. But, we often seem to neglect perhaps that we need a deeper vision that we want our students to carry with them as they encounter serious ethical issues related to sustainability, genetics and artificial intelligences and democratic living. Using the theory of change based on the three principles of thinking ahead, reaching across and delivering within - we will provide examples of schools might overcome the inertia all too often encountered by efforts to bring about system-wide change. 

Building the adaptive capacity of a school requires leadership, innovation, focus and evidence. Using a model of adaptive capacity and resilience, this presentation will introduce some key components of this work and provide case examples of what it takes to make it happen.

 

Building the adaptive capacity of a school requires leadership, innovation, focus and evidence. Using a model of adaptive capacity and resilience, this presentation will introduce some key components of this work and provide case examples of what it takes to make it happen.

 
 

After more than three decades of education policies that too often undermine teaching and learning, it’s time for education leaders to stand up and be counted. Alberta school leaders, like educators elsewhere, have endured and resisted misguided reforms that emphasize regulations over relationships, evaluation over education, and assessment and accountability over the artistry of teaching and school leadership. This session explores school leaders’ roles as citizens and enablers and agents of change. What can we do individually and collectively? Why should we act? What kind of citizens should we be?

Joel Westheimer is education columnist for CBC Radio's Ottawa Morning and Ontario Today shows and University Research Chair in Democracy and Education at the University of Ottawa. He began his career teaching in the New York City Public School system before obtaining a Ph.D. from Stanford University. His newest (2015) critically acclaimed book is What Kind of Citizen: Educating Our Children for the Common Good. Other multiple award-winning books include Pledging Allegiance: The Politics of Patriotism in America's Schools (foreword by Howard Zinn) and Among Schoolteachers: Community, Autonomy and Ideology in Teachers’ Work. Westheimer lectures widely and has delivered more than 200 keynote speeches. He is the author of more than 75 academic and professional journal articles, book chapters, and books. He addresses radio and television audiences nationally and internationally. He is co-founder and principal investigator for The Inequality Project, investigating what schools in North America are teaching students about economic inequality.