Better Together
Nā tō rourou, nā taku rourou ka ora ai te iwi
With your food basket and my food basket the people will thrive
Kia ora and welcome to the Better Together project. We are looking forward to working with you and learning together.
Auckland UniServices Ltd in partnership with the University of Auckland Faculty of Education and Social Work, is working with the Ministry of Education to better understand the role of curriculum leadership. This project is being managed by Future Learning Solutions and the Faculty of Education and Social Work and is titled “Better Together”.
Through this project we want to find out more about the networks operating within and across schools so we can understand how knowledge and capabilities are shared between leaders and teachers. Additionally, we want to know what the critical factors are leading networks/teams that progress effective curriculum teaching and learning.
High quality professional learning will be developed throughout this project to support curriculum leaders leading their teams.
There are two key aspects involved in this support:
- The first is gaining a better understanding of the networks curriculum leaders currently use to support curriculum improvement, so these networks can be grown and strengthened.
- The second aspect is developing the interpersonal and problem-solving skills needed to enact these improvement efforts successfully.
Below is a timeline for the Better Together project
Term 42019 |
Term 12020 |
Term 22020 |
Term 32020 |
Term 12021 |
Hui 1Overview 29 November
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Hui 2Problem solving intervention 6 March |
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Hui 3Social Network intervention Part 1: Mangere: 5 August Pakuranga: 28 July Part 2: 18 August: 9:30-1:00 |
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Mentoring |
Mentoring |
Mentoring |
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Online resourceAvailable |
Online resourceAvailable |
Online resourceAvailable |
Online resourceAvailable |
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Social Network SurveyCo-Design |
Social Network SurveySurvey 1 |
Social Network SurveyFeedback/Develop action plan |
Continue action plan |
Social Network SurveySurvey 2 (Feb/March) |
Useful Information
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| Local Curriculum Design Tool |
| To access the local curriculum design tool ask your principal or school leader to invite you. If your principal or school leader does not have access they will need to go to https://curriculumtool.education.govt.nz/, then go to “Get your Toolkit access” click on “here” the complete and submit the attached form. |
Growing networks for learning
Using Social Network Analysis for leadership
Curriculum team leaders have an important role in leading teams in ways that promote the improvement of curriculum.
This requires building expertise (including knowledge, capabilities, values, dispositions and skills) for improving curriculum design and enactment. But leaders of curriculum teams are not the sole holders of curriculum expertise – it is not a case of building individual leaders expertise and waiting for them to ‘drip feed it down’.
- There is lots of existing expertise across networks, schools/kura and teams about many aspects of curriculum potentially available to others. This does not suggest further professional learning is not important, but rather recognises there is pool of available expertise that may be left untapped without a strong network to enable it to flow.
- Leveraging that expertise, current and future, is supported through strengthening the networks through which expertise flows and is built
- When we can see what the network is like by creating an image of how they function, we can understand (and support others to understand) how to improve it
- The image of how they function should be based on high quality information from the members of the network, so that the picture of the network is as accurate as possible
- Accurate pictures of and high quality information about networks can be used in interventions with networks themselves, and enables targeting of resources and support