School Improvement Episode 57: Professor John Munro on leadership for the provision of gifted education

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Hello and thanks for listening to this School Improvement podcast from Teacher magazine, I’m Rebecca Vukovic.

My guest today is Professor John Munro, a teacher and a psychologist who has taught and researched in gifted education and talent development for 4 decades. The last time I sat down with John was in January 2020 when we recorded a podcast on gifted education – in particular, how to identify these learners, how to understand their learning needs and how to encourage them to reach their potential in the classroom. Five years on, we sat down again here in Melbourne to discuss themes from his new book published by ACER Press, Leading Improvement for Gifted and Talented Students. In particular, we explore leadership for the provision of gifted education – what it takes to develop a vision, putting together an action plan, upskilling teachers and collaborating with the wider community. I’m sure you’re going to get a lot out of this episode so let’s jump in. 

Rebecca Vukovic: Dr John Munro, thank you for joining Teacher magazine.

John Munro: Thank you for inviting me, Rebecca.

RV: We're here today to talk about targeting leadership for the provision of gifted education, drawing on ideas explored in your book, Leading improvement for gifted and talented students. The book clearly outlines targets for the first steps in implementing improved provision for gifted education and provides initial infrastructure. I'd like to take some time to delve into that infrastructure a little bit more, starting with developing a vision. Where does schools begin with this? What are some of those key questions that school leadership teams should be asking?

JM: That's a really great question to start off with, Rebecca. We're talking about a really complex process; the process of actually having a group of teachers ultimately, if it's successful, change their practice. So, part of the infrastructure does involve the school building a clear idea of where it wants to end up. If it doesn't do that, any attempts at provision are really going to be random – they're not going to have a direction at all. So, without a clearly identified, clearly explicit outcome, the innovation is almost directionless. From my experience, it is important that schools build a vision, but the process of building a vision involves various steps and the first step is to be really aware of what the challenge is.

What's the challenge facing the school? What do they want to target? The school needs to be aware that they can improve their provision for high-ability students, and also, they've got some reason for wanting to do that. They might, for example, be aware that they're not getting the advantages, or the values that high-ability students can bring to their learning. High-ability students can increase the curiosity of other students, they can introduce to the classroom ideas that the teaching didn't really mention, and so on. The school might be interested in moving in this direction because its results are showing it's not catering for the students in the high ability strand. NAPLAN, PISA data can actually show that. Third, they might be experiencing pressure from their community. You're not catering well for the high-ability students.

So, the first step is to really clarify what they're wanting to achieve, what's the challenge? Because you need to unpack that. And the second step then involves responding to that challenge in a particular way, and that is the whole notion of the intention – the intention to improve provision for the students. And it's really important that the leadership team actually commit to this – that they're aware that they're going to be committing resources, time, and teacher belief in the leadership in order for this to work.

And then the third step involves: What will it look like? When the provision is in place, what will teachers be doing differently? What will students be doing differently? What will the leadership be supporting differently? So, they need to build an awareness of that. 

Now we're talking about a provision for students who are gifted. In order to build that vision, or then to refine the vision, the leadership needs to know something about gifted learning, the leadership needs to know what a provision would look like. So, the initial vision is then gradually modified. Where will the leadership get information about this? Where will they go? Will they go to members of their staff who've got knowledge in that area? Yes, they will. If in fact they believe they don't have staff who are suitably equipped to help them unpack how gifted students learn and what effective provision would look like, they need to bring in someone who can help them, who can help them modify their vision and actually imagine what it will look like in the context of their school. 

So, the vision begins with this broad, diffuse idea where we're aware our students need to be learning differently, some students need to be achieving things they're not achieving now, and in order to that [to] happen provision needs to be modified in particular ways. And when I've worked with schools to help them actually, you know, modify or sharpen their vision, the key questions that we try to answer are the ones I've mentioned. What does high ability and gifted learning look like? What is the teaching that is going to support that? What are the curriculum modifications that those staff [need to make] in order for the students to be exposed to higher levels of knowledge? And also, what would a typical classroom climate and culture look like to actually support that work?

RV: Really interesting! And you also say that before starting on their action plan, you recommend that schools evaluate their current provision. Why is this important?

JM: A school will improve its provision by changing teaching practice – that's going to be the starting point. Teaching practice comprises 3 key components: the knowledge that the students are going to be learning (the curriculum); how the teaching will be put in place (the pedagogy), and the classroom climate that's going to be supporting that. In order for that to happen, teachers’ knowledge needs to change. And whenever any of us engage in learning, we start off with our existing knowledge. Our existing knowledge is the starting point for any learning. We can't learn something if we don't have the relevant knowledge.

It's really important that the school identifies all that it does have in place. What is working in the school for the high-ability students? What aspects of their provision are achieving those results? The starting point for any professional development is: What does the school already know? So, in terms of curriculum provision – what evidence is there in the school of curriculum differentiation in the various departments? To what extent (if it's a primary school), do Grade 4 students who are gifted in literacy have exposure to different knowledge expectations from those who are not gifted? In a secondary school, students are learning a topic in science – to what extent are some students learning a higher level of that topic than other students? So, one key issue for school to look at, what it does know is in how it differentiates curriculum. 

Secondly, what evidence exists – and this is what the school leadership team is looking for – what evidence exists for teachers systematically differentiating their teaching when they're planning what they're going to teach and in their implementation? So how are they actually modifying their teaching to cater for those high-ability students? And thirdly, obviously, to what extent do the classroom cultures in the school currently scaffold gifted students to learn? 

So, some of those key aspects are really important for the leadership team to actually collect data on. Teachers can be encouraged to talk about what they know about provision for gifted students in staff meetings. They can offer to lead discussions with other staff. They can talk about their experiences in working with gifted children, and so on. This information is going to provide the leadership with an idea, an estimate, of where the school is, because the professional development needs to start with what the school knows and then build on from that. The professional learning pathway begins where the current knowledge is.

RV: And of course, the next step is putting together that team to be the coordinators or leaders of the high ability and gifted provision. In most cases, who would this be? Will schools need to hire additional staff for the role, or will they upskill the teachers to become those middle leaders?

JM: OK. Once the leadership team has some awareness of what their staff already know, they can then reflect on what the staff need to know in order to change. What is the knowledge the staff need to know? The leadership team and the school need to start off planning a professional knowledge trajectory that's going to lead from where the school is now, to the provision that will be in place when they are catering better for these students. Now, the chances are the leadership team doesn't have the time or the knowledge, the in-depth knowledge, to actually lead that change; they don't have the knowledge to make that happen. 

What the school needs is a group of people who can drive the change, who can direct it, who can scaffold teachers, individual teachers, to adjust their teaching in the classroom, who can help a group of teachers bring together what they know now as they move along that trajectory. Now I'm suggesting that this group of teachers could be a group of middle leaders of high ability provision or gifted provision, and they're actually acting at the interface between the leadership and classroom practice. And they’re helping inform in detailed, knowing ways, the decisions the leadership is making, and they're helping to guide and lead what's going on in classrooms.

Now, what are some of the key areas of knowledge that the teachers need in order to achieve that? This group of teachers needs the opportunity to bring together a body of knowledge that can guide that practice. So, the middle leaders may need an in-depth, ongoing professional development activity where they actually learn how to improve or, first of all, how high-ability students actually learn, and then how to improve provision for them. They need to learn that. And they also need to know how to actually lead colleagues to modify or fine tune their practice. The school leadership team, in all likelihood, doesn't have the time or the knowledge to do that, and so I'm recommending that they put together a group of middle leaders who can be the power force in driving the professional learning.

Now, in order for school leaders to actually think about selecting who could be involved in this, they need to be aware of what these middle leaders would be doing. One aspect of their work would be to guide individual teachers and groups of teachers to interpret or operationalise the vision in their practice. So they need to be able to take the vision and imagine what it will look like in their classrooms. What will they be doing when the vision is actually vital and living? 

Secondly, they need to develop an action plan to achieve the student and teaching goals for each teacher, and for each group within the school. So, the middle leader team is assisting building the action plans and actually guiding people along them. And those action plans are going to target how differentiated practice will gradually be implemented – and I need to stress that the change process for a school is not going to happen overnight. It's going to possibly take several terms, although, gains will be made reasonably rapidly, in small jumps. The middle leaders need to be aware of what are indicators in order to monitor growth in teachers’ knowledge. How are they going to be deciding whether or not a particular plan needs to be modified, needs to be fine-tuned to match how individual teachers go about learning and practicing? And they also need procedures for modifying the provision. 

They need to lead the professional learning agenda. They need to know enough about this domain – the domain of gifted and high ability learning – to actually lead that work, to inform the knowledge of teachers. They need to be a collating the emerging professional knowledge of teachers. As teachers move along the trajectory, their professional knowledge will be changing. I believe this needs to be pooled so that it can underpin the next step the school will move in its knowledge. In other words, the school is building a teamwide, groupwide, knowledge that's going to inform its future practice. They also, as I mentioned earlier, need to develop ways of modifying the progress. 

So, when I've worked with schools to upskill the middle leadership team, this included leading a program where the middle leaders learn in depth a substantial knowledge of the various aspects of the provision. Secondly, I've been involved in guiding the leaders to implement the improved teaching, first in their own practice, doing it in their own classrooms. Doing in their own classrooms for possibly a term, so that they're really getting on top of what the practices are. They can identify any obstacles, any barriers that exist in the school. They can start to video their practice as the time goes on, but they're building up a corpus of knowledge that they can then use in the following terms for leading colleagues. So that they're actually getting it right in their practice first. 

I've also been involved in guiding the leaders to, again, pool their knowledge; put together the knowledge that they're gaining from the input that I provided but, equally importantly, the knowledge they're gaining from their practice – what they're learning, what they're discovering about how these students learn. And then the 4th aspect has been developing a typical action plan, a professional learning pathway, for the school as a whole to move forward. 

So, the 4 key aspects. Putting in place the opportunity to build a knowledge. Secondly, embedding it in classroom practice and that did include me spending time in some of the middle leaders’ classes demonstrating what differentiated teaching in different topics would look like. Thirdly, guiding them to bring together their knowledge so nothing is wasted. And fourthly, then, based on their knowledge, starting to build an explicit action plan, an explicit professional learning pathway for the implementation.

Coming up, I ask John to explain how a school goes about developing their action plan, and why it’s important to collaborate with parents, carers and the wider community. But first, here’s a quick message from today’s sponsor. 

You’re listening to a podcast from Teacher magazine, supported by Sora, the student reading platform that provides every student with access to the right books. Sora offers your school’s curriculum titles, along with popular leisure titles available digitally anytime, anywhere. Visit discoversora.com/global today to learn why Sora is a worldwide leader for digital ebooks and audiobooks for students.

RV: John, you recommend that schools are familiar with the expectations and requirements of their educational jurisdictions. Why is this an important step?

JM: Educational jurisdictions recommend particular perspectives on gifted education provision. Now, they differ – different jurisdictions differ in whether or not they even talk about ‘giftedness’ as opposed to ‘high ability’. They differ in the criteria they use for identifying the different types of ability. They differ in how they recommend high ability be identified. They differ in the practices they recommend. A school needs to be aware of what the jurisdiction actually proposes, and the various procedures it recommends in those areas. It's also though useful for the school to be aware that there are alternatives to what the jurisdiction is proposing, because it may be in a few years’ time, that the jurisdiction changes its perspective. 

So, the whole idea on what the jurisdiction already knows is important. The school is operating within a jurisdiction. It may well be asking for resource support from the jurisdiction and the jurisdiction requires alignment to some extent with what it's doing. But what is really important to remember, and I've been around a fair while and I've seen jurisdictions change how they’re seeing provision for gifted students and how they, or the perspectives they have, on who these students are and what they learn. The one thing that doesn't change is that in every jurisdiction, in every class, there will be some students who will be learning at a high level. And however the jurisdiction frames up these students, those students are there, and they really deserve provision that allows them to optimise their talent development and learning outcomes.

RV: Yeah, definitely. Let's talk about the action plan now, which involves determining who will be involved in the implementation, the possible timeframe, resources needed, and of course a lot more. What are some of the key things that schools need to consider when developing their action plan? 

JM: Some of the key things that they need to focus on are, first of all unpacking the activity of each of the main roles in this provision. What is it that the school leader, the leadership team, is going to be doing? What are they going to be scaffolding, supporting, guiding in, all the way through the program? That's really important. Secondly, the action plan needs to unpack the activity of the middle leadership team. How they'll go about learning the content and when. When they're going to be coached to implement the teaching in their classrooms. How they're going to be prepared to lead their colleagues. How they will actually lead the development – and this will happen in the next term or the following terms. And how they will go about monitoring changes.

It also needs to clarify how the individual teachers will be changing their practice. So, the plan needs to identify what gains will be identified for each term? So, each term, how will teaching practice be different and what will high-ability students be doing differently at the at the end of that term? And I would also be going further still and saying the plan needs to identify the changes that the school would be looking for every 3 or 4 weeks, because if I have that in place I'm more likely to achieve the outcomes at the end of the term.

The plan also needs to identify when staff knowledge will be collated, when will it be put together and celebrated for ‘hey, what do we know now’? That could happen every half a term. They do need to identify the whole range of resources that are needed to underpin this. Teacher release time, materials, access to small group, middle leadership collation, and so on. Building this explicit knowledge is really important.

RV: And finally, in the book, you say that schools can optimise the success of their improvement agendas by planning a strategy for collaborating with families, parents and carers, as well as other stakeholders in the school. What are some of the potential benefits of involving the wider community in this way?

JM: Rebecca, this is a really great question. One context in which students can show high-ability outcomes is in the classroom. The student can also show high level outcomes in a range of other contexts outside of the classroom. Now, we know that many famous scientists, many musicians, many sports people, many artists gained or first thought of what led to them being seen as talented while they were at school. 

James Watt, playing with his mother's kettle. A lot of students while at school have creative ideas that won't necessarily be seen in the classroom. 

Parents and members of the community can see instances of gifted learning and outcomes that are high level, unique possibilities that the students’ teachers will never see – they won't see them in the classroom. Communication with the students’ family and with relevant community members who have interacted with the student is critical for putting together a total gifted learning profile. The information that comes from these sources can impact directly on how teachers go about differentiating and enriching the educational provision. It can lead to the school compiling a more comprehensive understanding of how the child learns. 

Now, these observations are really important for those students who are twice exceptional – for those students who are gifted but who don't show their gifted knowledge in the classroom. When I hear about what a twice-exceptional child has achieved outside of the classroom, in all sorts of ways, I can then start to get an insight into how I might modify my teaching, how I might go about scaffolding that child to think in other ways about the learning situation. 

I’d just like to give you an example of a year 10 student who I had contact with. This student was in an alternative setting. When I met him, he told me he was hopeless at literacy, hopeless and numeracy, wasn't successful at all, and he didn't know what he would be doing with his life. He was 16 and it hit me, you know, when he said this. It then emerged that 2 or 3 weeks earlier, another student in this setting had brought along a chainsaw in pieces. He hadn't seen the chainsaw before, but he had it assembled and working in 10 minutes.

RV: Wow.

JN: I've got a chainsaw. I've got a PhD. I would have loved that knowledge. Now, there are many students who don't have the opportunity to do that. When I heard that, I couldn't help but think if I were teaching him in a year 9 science class, if I was teaching him about buoyancy, and I had him, you know, demonstrate [to] the rest of students how you can investigate Archimedes’ principle by trying to push objects that float, down. If an object is sinking, what do you do to keep it up? The whole notion … he in our discussion, he had a real understanding of forces, action forces, forces that drove the chain on the chainsaw. What a missed opportunity and what an inappropriate message to send.

So, I am committed very much to the idea that the community, that the parents can provide me with very useful information about how these students learn. We need to remember as well that for a lot of high-ability students, the classroom situation can be stressful. But the students don't show their stress in the classroom, they show it at home; they become angry at home, they become aggressive, they withdraw, they sob. The teacher doesn't see that, the parents do. And it is so important that I collect information from the parents along those lines.

The situation that we're talking about is really complex. It’s a complex situation. Asking a group of teachers to change their practice and to guide them to do that in a sustained way is not easy. We're not asking teachers in this situation to do more. The school leadership team can ask teachers to do some things differently, and that's the focus of what we're on about.

RV: John, as always, it's so lovely to catch up with you and to talk with you. Thank you so much for sharing your insights with Teacher magazine.

JM: Thank you very much for the opportunity.

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You’ve been listening to a podcast from Teacher magazine, supported by Sora, the student reading platform that provides access to curriculum and popular digital books for schools. Learn more at discoverSora.com/global.