Strategic Planning for Schools

wasted your time. Err on the side of brevity. • Write your ICT policy in everyday language, avoiding unnecessary jargon. (Fox, 2003, p. 30)

The definition of strategic planning is “a disciplined effort to produce fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization is, what it does, and why it does it” (Bryson, 1995 as cited in Ziegler, Kirwan, & Smeltzer, 2012, p. 117)). It forms one of the tenets of community leadership in schools and is a process that allows a school community to consider how factors like technology can change over time. Additionally, it includes opportunities for the school community to benefit from these changes and prepare to minimise the effects of possible threats to the school community.

Strategic considerations include: • The changing expectations of teachers associated with the introduction of new technologies; • The ways to enable more effective usage of digital technologies and; • The new understandings of the relationship between emerging technologies and theories of learning described under the label of ‘connectivism’. (Finger, 2009, p. 51)

It is true what Finger (2009) said about achieving a sustainable ‘digital take-off’ that it requires you to think differently about the nature of learning with and through ICT, embedded teaching strategies with ICT and indeed the structure and organisation of the school.

4 Strategic Planning Intents

As an educational leader, you must understand and appreciate what you intend to achieve. There are four strategic intents which Finger (2009) points out:

1. Understand the new context. 2. Create new learning environments. 3. Identify the roles and importance of teachers. 4. Meet people’s needs related to use of technology.

Understanding the new context: this is about how you would consider the contexts in which students and teachers are immersed with the pervasiveness of media and related digital technologies. You must understand that new educational thinking about the different contexts is needed in order for you to comprehend the increasing gap between children’s experience of computers at home and that of at school.

Creating new learning environments: it is important that you create flexible technology-rich learning environments with new and emerging ICT that will also allow for a diverse range of pedagogies. Additionally, they need to support students to provide relevant answers to their ‘What if?’ questions in ways that can bring their answers to reality.

Identifying the roles and importance of teachers: the transformation of teaching and learning will only occur through people and not technology itself.

Meeting people’s needs related to use of technology: the roles of students and teachers have changed when using technology in the classroom. You need to account for new organisational structures and relationships.

A recommended approach for identifying and addressing students’ and teacher needs with the use of technology in the classroom is that developed by Norwood (2006, as cited by Finger, 2009, p63). In the table that follows, you will notice that he has matched the ICT strategies against the levels of need.

Needs ICT Strategies Self-actualisation Use new technologies creatively. Explore new technologies. Be innovative and enterprising. Empower students and teachers. Esteem Celebrate the acquisition of new knowledge, new skills and using new software. Publish and display student work. Participate in website and multimedia design challenges and competitions. Employ computer mentors, student tutors, class experts. Capitalise upon student and teacher knowledge and skills. Belonging Collaborate on Internet projects. Engage in team multimedia planning, design and production. Network with peers, teachers, students and the local and wider community. Safety Support students and teachers with technophobia and cyber phobia and in issues of appropriate use of ICT. Table 1. ICT Strategies associated with Maslow’s hierarchy of Needs

Strategic Planning Principles

According to Finger (2009, pp. 64-65) there are five elements which underpin your roadmaps and intentions which are:

• Principle 1: Recognise the importance of people • Principle 2: Develop an educational rationale for ICT use • Principle 3: Adopt techno-choice perspective for ICT • Principle 4: Develop an ICT plan as part of an overall school or system development strategy • Principle 5: ICT initiatives should inform and be informed by research.

Principle 1

Educational activity must be seen as a human endeavour. Successful transformation of teaching and learning will always be enabled and judged by people. However, it is the technology that is too often foregrounded rather than the learning.

A technology-centred approach misses the point. Instead, we need to promote people dreaming, creating, testing, critiquing, debating and telling their personal stories of learning, of challenges met and overcome, and of developing appropriate, innovative design solutions.

Principle 2

ICT strategies need a good educational rationale.

The limitations of techno-centric approaches is a lack of an appropriate guiding educational rationale. An educational rationale is based on an informed awareness of learning theories and effective teaching practices, and how these can be effectively integrated and supported by digital technologies to improve outcomes for students.

Basing plans on a good educational rationale means asking questions such as ‘What are we trying to achieve?’ and ‘Why?’, and then using the answers to inform technology purchases and infrastructure planning, rather than the technology determining the educational activity.

Principle 3

The techno-choice perspective encourages educators to ‘evaluate the appropriateness and effectiveness of available technologies, deciding when and how to use them with their students’ (MCEETYA, 2005, p4). This is consistent with Roblyer’s (2006) call for teachers, rather than others, to determine the relative advantage of using ICT. A techno-choice perspective, support by the development of an educational rationale proves a solid platform for informing decisions about infrastructure, hardware, software, and other ICT purchases.

Principle 4

Strategic planning in ICT needs to be linked to the overall school or system development strategy. The following conditions are suggested by UNESCO (2002) achieving the desired alignment:

• The creation of a shared systemic vision for

ICT and education that will afford an understanding of, commitment to and sense of advocacy for the implementation of technology at all levels within and across the system. • Policy that supports and does not hinder the implementation of ICT in education. • Adequate access to digital technologies, the

Internet and WWW needs to be available to teachers and students wherever and whenever they choose to learn. • Technical assistance to use and maintain the

technology resources at a high standard is required. • Teachers and students need access to high-quality, meaningful and culturally responsive digital content. • Teachers need knowledge and skills to use modern digital technologies and resources to facilitate student-centred approaches to learning for all students.

Finger (2009, p. 66) concludes that for your plan to effective “should incorporate these essential conditions and be based upon the recognition of the importance of people (Principle 1), guided by a defensible educational rationale (Principle 2), and the determination of the relative advantage of ICT guided by a techno-choice perspective (Principle 3)”.

Principle 5

ICT initiatives should both inform and be informed by research, and planning in ICT needs to build in a research component.

Through research, the national and global education research priorities can be built upon which anticipates the emerging trends and priorities. It also creates new possibilities for learning.

Three Elements to Effective Strategic Planning

There are three elements of effective strategic planning according to Reeves (2020) that are to do with:

1. Monitoring – there needs to be consistent and frequent analysis of student performance, teaching strategies and leadership practices. 2. Evaluation – every program, initiative and strategy is subject to the question ‘is it working?’ 3. Expectations - schools in which leaders and teachers believe that their work is the fundamental cause of student achievement perform significantly better than schools in which leaders attribute student achievement primarily to student demographic characteristics (Reeves, 2020).

When developing your strategic plan, there are a number of factors to consider which include:

• Existing (and future) infrastructure and resources; • Teacher professional ICT development; • Financial management; • Communication to community stakeholders and; • Assessment and evaluation.

There are a number of phases which you need to go through according to Hughes and Burke (2014):

Establish your goals and vision (or decide on an initiative)

• Gain support from all stakeholders. • Have a clear idea of the purpose and rationale of your initiative. • Communicate your goals. • Outline your plans in order to avoid roadblocks. • Invite stakeholders into professional learning communities. • Communicate to stakeholders

Determine roles

This requires a collaborative team effort so you will need to appoint a technology committee. For each member, it will be important to clearly define their roles. Members can include:

• Project leader. • Teachers with advanced ICT skills can be asked to organise professional development in technology integration in the classroom or be as mentors for other staff members. • Parent volunteers can help gain sponsorship from local businesses. • Another staff member can chair the committee

ICT Audits – Needs Analysis

This is effectively a quantitative and qualitative analysis of all aspects of ICT. It will help establish your current position once you have set your vision for the school. There will be questions which you will need to ask and include examples of sources of evidence such as that posed by Hall (2010, p. 161):

• Schemes of works (all subjects). • Individual lesson plans. • Classroom observations. • Teaching and learning policy. • In-service and teacher professional development planning. • Discussions with students, teachers and support staff. • IEPs and other learning programmes for students with special needs. • Documents relating to individual self-evaluations. • Cross-curricular ICT planning, including minutes of meetings. • Student peer review and evaluation documentation. • Inventories of ICT resources.

You will also need to ask questions in relation to hardware and software such as: • What exists? What can be used? • What is obsolete and should be removed from the school? • What is the existing infrastructure? • Where do you need wireless access? • What areas are priorities if you cannot have ubiquitous access in the building? (Hughes & Burke, 2014, p. 20)

The ICT audit is intended to address the question ‘where are you now’? Fox (2003, pp. 36-38), has provided a variety of questions related to the key issues which include: