NETWORKED LEARNING COMMUNITIES

Characteristics of ‘networked learning’ – what are we learning?

David Jackson, Networked Learning Group, NCSL

“It isn’t about knowing, but about continuous learning; not about hierarchy, but about relationships; not about seeking stability, but about encouraging dynamic interplay; not about being self-contained, but about being connected; not about singular solutions, but about multiple opportunities; not about control, but about positioning for innovation and creativity; not about competition, but about collaboration; not about the parts, but about the 'multiple wholes' that can be made by continuous integration and disintegration.”

(Dr. Rick Foster, Vice President at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.)

A paper prepared for the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement, 'BuildingBridges for SustainableSchool Improvement'.

6th - 9th January 2004, Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

Correspondence to:

NETWORKED LEARNING COMMUNITIES

Characteristics of ‘networked learning’ – what are we learning?

David Jackson, Networked Learning Group, NCSL

Abstract

This paper explores learning about ‘networked learning’ within the Networked Learning Communities initiative. Section 1 outlines some of the knowledge fields and early learning that informed the NLC design and the programme characteristics. Section 2 opens by exploring the difference between a ‘network’ and ‘networking’. ‘Networked learning’, as it is understood within the work, is then defined using theoretical, empirical and metaphorical perspectives. The paper concludes with some of the emergent learning themes about networked learning from the first year of the programme’s work and some issues that remain to be resolved.

SECTION 1 - BACKGROUND TO NETWORKED LEARNING COMMUNITIES

Networked Learning Communities – early learning

Whilst generating the Networked Learning Communities design between January and April 2002, the programme team drew upon five key fields of knowledge:

  1. theory and research – through the study of previous initiatives within the UK and internationally;
  2. policy learning– by commissioning a study of previous network-based policy initiatives;
  3. messages from ‘best practice’– by visiting sites of interesting practice around the world;
  4. expert knowledge – by connecting with those with experience and understanding using think tanks, knowledge seminars and critical friendship relationships;
  5. practitioner understanding– utilising the grounded wisdoms of programme leaders, network facilitators and practitioners.

NCSL commissioned an extensive desk study of literature relating to network-based school development programmes in the UK and abroad (Kerr, et al NFER, 2003), together with a study of fields of theory underpinning the proposed NLC design (McCormick, 2003). A large-scale study was also commissioned into the published evaluation reports of both successful and less successful network reform initiatives of the past decade (Bentley et al, Demos, 2002). This research, entitled “Learning the Lessons”proved to be a rich source of practical wisdom, drawing from the recent history of UK reform and from key initiatives abroad. We also commissioned focused research on some areas of specific interest, such as: communities of practice (Thorpe et al 2003), action learning sets (Fielding et al, 2003) andonline learning communities (Open University, 2003).

Prior to embarking upon the initiative, NCSL undertook study visits (using enquiry partnerships involving both academics and school leaders) to fourteen locations around the world – eight in the USA and Canada, others in New Zealand, Australia, Sweden, South Africa and Singapore. These visits looked at both leadership development and the relationships between centres and networks of partner schools (Bush and Jackson, 2001; West and Jackson, 2002).

We attended the OECD international seminar in Lisbon designed to draw learning fromthe world’s most advanced school-to-school networks (OECD, 2000). Throughout the development phase, both in England and abroad, a systematic programme of think tank opportunities and invited seminars was instituted, initially to provide ongoing critique of the design and then subsequently to subject the principles and practical strategies of the programme to critical scrutiny and to draw out the evolving learning. This commitment to modelling networked learning principles remains a core value of the programme – which is viewed as being in constant evolution, subject to the critique of practitioners and academics. (ICSEI 2004 provides another opportunity to learn from others and to receive analytical feedback on the work.)

We also read widely from related literature; we involved international experts as critical friends and partners; and we built enquiry, research and learning into our evolving work. Before we started, we felt that we knew some things. We now know more.

Networked Learning Communities –what are they?

The Programme

A Networked Learning Community (NLC) is a cluster of schools working in partnership to enhance the quality of pupil learning, professional development, and school-to-school learning. We have drawn from the OECD Lisbon Seminar (2000) in defining NLCs as follows:

Networked Learning Communities are purposefully led social entities that are characterised by a commitment to quality, rigour and a focus on outcomes. They are also an effective means of supporting innovation in times of change. In education, Networked Learning Communities promote the dissemination of good practice, enhance the professional development of teachers, support capacity building in schools, mediate between centralised and decentralised structures, and assist in the process of re-structuring and re-culturing educational organisational systems.

The programme is designed to improve learning opportunities for pupils and to support the development of schools as interdependent professional learning communities. It places teachers, leaders and schools at the heart of innovation and knowledge creation within the profession and enables the development of local, context-specific practices and solutions. Such solutions can be adopted and interpreted by schools in other contexts. NLCs act as critical friends to one another -Network-to Network learning, across the system, is one of the key opportunities offered by the initiative. Each has additionally elected to have at least one external partner, which can be a Higher Education Institution (HEI), Local Education Authority (LEA) orCommunity Group – and most have more than one.

The programme itself was developed as a partnership initiative involving the NationalCollege for School Leadership (NCSL), Department for Education and Skills (DfES), the General Teaching Council (GTC), the Innovation Unit (IU) and the Teacher Training Agency (TTA). In this way the system can seek to mirror networking, collaboration and knowledge sharing values. NCSL acts as the facilitator of learning and knowledge transfer between Networks and takes responsibility also for spreading good practice from the programme to the wider audience within both practice and policy.

Specifically, each NLC (and by September2003 there were 110, involving over 1,200 schools) comprises a group or network of schools committed to partnership and interdependence:

  • to raise standards by improving the learning of pupils and staff, and by supporting school-to-school learning
  • to develop leadership for learning by developing and harnessing the leadership potential of a wide range of people
  • to build capacity for growth and continuous improvement by schools enquiring into their practice and by sharing both process and product outcomes.

Learning networks are thus being promoted which can enrich professional practice as they create and exchange knowledge to support improvement in teaching and learning and organisational restructuring. In achieving these goals, schools within NLCs aspire to:

  1. collaborate around the study of teaching and learning – within and between schools;
  2. promote practitioner enquiry – co-creating knowledge;
  3. engage with theory and research, in support of enquiry processes, so building a knowledge-base about what works;
  4. utilise a wide variety of approaches to CPD including: coaching/mentoring, induction programmes, lesson study, pupil feedback, intervisitations and internal and external programmes of learning that qualify for accreditation;
  5. draw theory from the collaborative study of practice with a view both to implementing the learning from this process, and to generating artefacts such that they can be shared with other schools and networks.

NLCs commit to: improve the learning of pupils and staff through school-to-school learning; build capacity for growth and continuous improvement – and knowledge about the process; provide a supportive context for risk-taking and creativity, and the confidence to ‘turn and face the danger’ – to take charge of innovation and change and thrive.

The NLC design

There are six strands to the basic framework of the Networked Learning Communities design, and four non-negotiable principles. The six strands are:

  • Pupil learning (a pedagogic focus)
  • Adult learning (with professional learning communities as the aspiration)
  • Leadership learning (at all levels, but particularly collaborative headteacher learning)
  • Organisational learning (progressive redesign around learning principles)
  • School-to-school learning (and between communities of practice)
  • Network-to-Network learning (a programme priority).

The four non-negotiable principles are:

  • Moral purpose – a commitment to success for all children. (“Raising the bar and closing the gap” is a social justice representation of the same theme.)
  • Shared leadership (for example, co-leadership)
  • Enquiry-based practice (evidence and data-driven learning)
  • Adherence to a model of learning

Both collaborative engagement and generosity of spirit are involved – hence two key mantras within the initiative. The one for collaboration is: ‘working smarter together, rather than harder alone’ and for the critical moral purpose dimension: ‘learning from, with and on behalf of’one another’.

The NLC Model of Learning

There are many elements to the learning models within Networked Learning Communities. We are committed to inside-out change processes; to coherence-making through joint learning; to sustainability and capacity-building; to reflective, problem-solving and knowledge-creating approaches. We seek to act out co-constructed learning and contextual enquiry.

However, ananalytical template that we apply to all our work is drawn from the parity that we attach to three fields of knowledge. These are:

  1. Practitioner knowledge (we start from what people know, the knowledge that people bring to the learning table).
  2. Publicly available knowledge (the theory and research publicly available to be drawn in to learning environments).
  3. The new knowledge that we are able to create together through collaborative working and enquiry.

Figure1.3Fields of Knowledge

A key dimension of the model, as indicated, is the inter-relationship of the three knowledge fields through network-based activity and use within classrooms – represented by the connecting ring of the model. The model is consistent with what we know about knowledge use in networks. Lieberman and Wood (2003) state in their recent publication on the American ‘Writing Project’: “Linking school knowledge and university knowledge, they (networks) …find ways for “inside knowledge” (the knowledge that teachers create on the job) to inform “outside knowledge” (the knowledge of reformers, researchers and policy-makers), and vice versa” (McLaughlin and Talbot, 2001). Similarly, it is consistent with the challenges of an increasingly knowledge-based era, which is triggering new ways of learning that involve leveraging diverse perspectives into collective or shared group intelligence and integrating theory, new capacities, and practice with one another (Senge, 1994). Finally, it fits with holistic, non-linear models of learning. In their book about network-based systems for the knowledge society, Allen and Cherry (2000) describe how the classroom model of linear and sequenced learning has defined and bounded our understanding of ‘curriculum’ – and has even dominated models of CPD for teachers. In reality, though, learning opportunities are much more complex, random, chaotic and spiralling. A double helix much more accurately describes the reality of non-classroom learning, which throws up learning opportunities multiply, and without respect for organisational or classroom boundaries. It much more accurately also describes the view of learning in Networked Learning Communities.

The NLC learning focus

Each Network is asked to identify a pedagogically grounded ‘Learning Focus’. This is the unifying theme, around which ‘networked learning’ is located and which underpins activity undertaken between schools – and it must act itself out in classrooms. It is the initial vehicle through which NLCs begin to change organisational processes in support of new ways of working together. This Learning Focus is locally owned, and also has to have something of relevance to other networks, in order to facilitate wider transfer of knowledge.

Networked Learning Communities and ‘networked learning’

Networked Learning Communities is, then, a ‘development and research programme’ – we apply the learning model to do work together and to learn from it, this emphasis being a very significant orientation. We use the terms ‘the work’ and ‘the programme’ to signify this. The work is what Networks do. It goes on both without our support and with it. The programme, on the other hand, is the ways in which the project team adds value to the work of Networks and seeks to gather together a body of knowledge about ‘networked learning’. In doing this, our network consultancy team perform four roles simultaneously or interchangeably in their interactions with networks and with network co-leaders they are:

  1. consultants and they ask good questions;
  2. networkers and they connect networks to one another;
  3. sense-makers and interpreters as they enquire into network practices and processes;
  4. reporters and writers, finding ways of representing what they are learning.

Through the adaptive use of this model of facilitation we seek to support good work in networks and to learn both from what they do and from how we can best provide support. We ask good questions and make connections, we guide and prompt, we act as critical friend – we hold the networks to account against their own aspirations and the values of the programme, too. Simultaneously, network consultancy involves developing insights – understanding, observing, analysing, drawing learning from the work of Networks, making the connections that will enable network-to-network learning. This transfer of knowledge requires collective sense-making and representation or ‘reification’ processes, (Wenger, 1998, 2002). The reflective sessions that we have – a two day residential each month for all facilitators, researchers and writers – allow us also to make sense of what we are learning and to turn it into usable artefacts, protocols, processes and artefacts. Increasingly, the generation of these artefacts is a co-created process with our networks.

The purposes of this formal representation of learning are to allow emergent knowledge to be used both within and beyond the programme to fulfil our three core programme objectives:

  1. the development of good networks
  2. learning about ‘networked learning’
  3. learning from, with and on behalf of the wider system

It is the second of these objectives that is the real focus of this paper. We are clear about the unique characteristic of our programme. It is not uniquely expertise in pedagogy, or andragogy, or leadership learning, or school improvement – although we hope to have something to contribute in all these areas, as have others. We are, though, uniquely placed to study ‘networked learning’.

SECTION 2 –NETWORKED LEARNING

A central idea of the English reform agenda is that of a world class system driven by the energy of the schools. There is an assumption that collaboration is one of the ways in which that energy is generated and sustained. Accordingly, we need to look at how the reform agenda can build collaborative capacity across the school system - hence there is a reciprocity, a virtuous circle, in which reform now both depends upon collaborative capacity and seeks to build it. (Tom Bentley, Demos)

Introduction – the context

There is nothing particularly new about networking. Teachers, headteachers and schools have long engaged with one another in forms of collaborative activity. However, there is something fundamentally more purposeful and aspirational about the idea of ‘collaborative capacity’, because it is conceived as being a part of the future innovation, development and knowledge management architecture of the school system.

Currently much thought, in the UK and around the world, is focused upon how a transition might be effected from one reform paradigm to another. The reform agenda of the past decade or more has been characterised by the application of uniform national strategies (albeit based upon informed understandings from past change efforts); by sequenced and delivered ‘outside-in’ solutions; and by the application of external accountabilities to measure pupil, school and system learning gains. This approach has served well to lever up attainment in the short-term, to make targets and outcome expectations clear, to identify and address problem environments and to mobilise and focus the profession. It is not, however, a capacity building model, and nor is it the ideal policy context to foster collaborative values. It is therefore unsurprising that attainment trajectories in the UK, having risen sharply initially, have now levelled off, or that professional morale is low, or that schools feel little sense of ownership over the direction the agenda has taken.

So, whilst improvement programmes which apply best existing knowledge across the system have produced some short-term gains, for a range of reasonsmanaged,centre-to-periphery, outside-in change strategies are unlikely to work well in the medium to long term. Change needs are too rapid, knowledge is too ubiquitous, contexts of knowledge application are too diverse and, possibly most importantly, “the improvements already achieved have not closed the gap in educational achievement between the most and least advantaged” (Hargreaves, 2003).

It is no longer efficient or appropriate to use hierarchical model of control or dissemination to try to achieve a task of continuous adaptation and diversification – one-to-many modes of reform work best when there are relatively simple, constant, universal priorities. Similarly, outside-in strategies are unlikely to be sensitive to the unique challenges of diverse contexts, nor to stimulate and thus utilise practitioner innovation. A new form of team based collaboration, employing lateral transfer strategies, is a more effective method of integration and adaptation – and has been shown to be so in many different organisational settings. In those sectors that have been through the most profound organisational restructuring over the last generation, ‘task groups’, ‘project-based teams’ and collaborative relationships are essential to maintaining organisational coherence and collective purpose amid the manifold complexities and insecurities of contemporary organisational life (adapted from Bentley, 2003).