SPANZ Day 2: Keynote address - Leading for Equity: Laurayne Tafa, Equity as a Measurement for Leadership

 

Laurayne Tafa - Education Consultant, Cognition Education

Mihimihi/Acknowledgements - Laurayne acknowledged the work of Dr Russell Bishop and the work on which her presentation is based. 

Link to Teaching to the North-East - Relationship-based and his writing of his upcoming book - Leading to the North-East. 

'o le alai le pule o le tautua' - The pathway to leadership is through service. Acknowledgement of Barbara Ala'alatoa.

Shout out to Kiri Turketo for convincing Laurayne (and Damon) to attend. 

Leaders who accelerate equity:

Five key success factors

1. Recognise and reject any deficit theories for these disparities 

• Leaders who can recognise and reject deficit language, theories and discourses are not debilitated by the downward spiral effect. 
• Equal support and equal status for ākonga Māori and mātauranga Māori. Integrating the hidden curriculum discourse. 

2. Know where disparities exist - and target why they exist.

• Knowing how your system is failing groups of students and teachers is key to equity leadership.
• Use evidence to identify WHERE and explanations to identify the WHY.
• As system is reflective of leader's discourse. Consider your position and what it this legitimises.

Question - How do you explain why some students are successful and others are not in your system? 

3.  Implement and monitor and monitor a proven pedagogical intervention.

• The most critical intervention are those between learner and teacher - then the focus needs to be on relationships and teaching pedagogies in the classroom,  
• Where culture counts the most. 
• The pedagogical interventions that should interest the most are the proven ones with evidence from classrooms that accelerate educational outcomes for Indigenous, Pasifika and the marginalised groups. 

Question - If you asked any teacher what the preferred/expected pedagogies are....what would they recite? Does a clear common code of practice guide pedagogical choices? Do they work for all learners?

4. Own your professional learning system.

• Make the effectiveness of teaching the single most important focus for teachers.
• Actively manage competing priorities for teachers.
• Promote and coordinate the activities that best promote professional learning.
• Bring theory, practice and impact on student together. 
• Create expert teachers - through a culture of collaboration and change.
• Non-judgemental evidence based feedback on proven pedagogies.

To be respectfully supported to:

• make sense of the evidence
• confronted prevailing discourses that are harmful and ineffective and
• reform these practices. 

Question How many school wide department specific interventions are active? Know what is working and why - allows you to be self-determining and to respond positively to the cultural and learning needs for teachers. 

5. Lead system change.

• Be ready to respond with structural reform. 
• Asking the hard questions of our system.
• High quality, robust, reliable and balanced data sets.
• Preparedness to re-organise institutionalised frameworks.
• Engage in problem-solving talk. Not war stories. 

Question - How are you making yourself aware of... how/if your leadership decisions are enabling or creating barriers to the equity agenda at all levels of the system. 

He koha - I laid it down, you pick it up. You pick it up on behalf of your whole community. 

An earlier version of this presentation is available here: https://www.springboardtrust.org.nz/news/leading-for-equity-laurayne-tafa-equity-as-a-measurement-of-leadership