LfL at ICSEI 2005 Barcelona, Spain

The 18th International Congress on School Effectiveness and Improvement met in Barcelona in January 2005. As in previous years the Cambridge ELSI group had a significant presence at the annual ICSEI conference. There were at least 9 of us from Cambridge (John MacBeath, Gregor Sutherland, Sue Swaffield, David Frost, Kate Myers, Joanne Waterhouse, Amanda Roberts, Jane Cullen, Gary Holden, Tony Kirwan) together with other associates who were presenting with other teams.

We presented our work in no less than 4 symposia, and further Conference details are outlined below:

  1. The 'Leadership for Learning the Cambridge Network' symposium chaired by David Frost
  2. The 'Leadership for Learning: the Carpe Vitam project' symposium chaired by John MacBeath
  3. The 'Learning, Teaching and Evaluating in the Global Classroom' symposium chaired by Gregor Sutherland
  4. The 'Bridges Across Boundaries: innovation and breakthrough practice in networked learning communities' chaired by John MacBeath.

Overview: The setting for the conference was the recently built and innovatively designed 'Centre de Convencions Internacional de Barcelona' sandwiched between the sea and the Diagonal Mar shopping mall. Our hosts were Juana Ma. Sancho and Fernando Hernández of the Universitat de Barcelona.

The international nature of the conference was stimulating and challenging. Most sessions were subject to simultaneous translation into Spanish, Catalan, and English. Francesca Brotto's presentation in the Bridges Across Boundaries symposium reflected one of the really stimulating aspects of such a conference. She looked at language, how ideas change as they move from one culture to another and how the international comparisons challenge our assumptions about educational practice.

Particularly interesting was meeting headteachers, principals, teachers, administrators and researchers from a wide range of countries and comparing notes about 'challenging circumstances', 'school organisation', and many similar themes.

Karen Seashore-Louis's keynote address on 'professional learning communities' was very stimulating, for example reporting on schools put together by local communities to provide education for migrant workers along the border between the USA and Mexico. Similarly, the keynote by Wambui Gathenya, from the Ministry of Education in Kenya focussed on the challenges of providing universal primary education for nomadic tribes, child labourers who have to work in order to eat, and older siblings responsible for younger siblings orphaned by HIV/AIDS. It was particularly amazing to hear about a bold change of policy that increased number of children in school from 5.9 million on Friday to 7.5 million. The leadership issues facing the headteachers of schools affected are awesome.

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Our LfL symposium: Unfortunately, like a number of others, the LfL abstract was missing from the book of abstracts. Despite last minute attempts by the congress secretariat to advertise our session, the turnout was quite low (about 25). Undeterred, we used an approach where we have brief presentations supported with a single A4 sheet to facilitate discussion with the audience. A pack of full academic papers was distributed at the end of the session and people also invited to email us for packs to be posted to them. We had a lot of positive feedback on the range of our LfL work and an interesting challenge about the need for a meta-analysis.

Our Carpe Vitam symposium: drew a large crowd - up to 80 people. It was challenging to present such a complex project and include contributions from the eight countries involved especially when you have to use microphones for the translation purposes but the feedback was that we came across as coherent and working as a team.

The Bridges Across Boundaries symposium: focussed on the project initiated by Franscesca Brotto from the Italian Ministry of Education to spread John MacBeath's work on school self-evaluation to all corners of the European Union. There were contributions from Poland, Czech Republic and Greece. Francesca's contribution challenging the 'grand narratives' of education was particularly powerful.

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The AGM, always held at the ICSEI conference, was a dramatic occasion for us because it featured an election for the next ICSEI President. There were two candidates - Sam Stringfield from the United States and our own John MacBeath. We are happy to report that the latter was duly elected. The locations for future conferences were confirmed as follows:

If you would like to signal your interest in future conferences then please get in touch with David Frost. You can also visit the website www.leadership.fau.edu/ICSEI2006/

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Barcelona: we enjoyed being in Barcelona - a spectacular city. We experienced some fine Catalan restaurants, and some sightseeing. Gaudi's stunning architecture was inspirational. The weather was brilliant. There were people swimming in the sea and strolling by the beach. The traditional epiphany procession was also entertaining. We were told by the team from Fort Lauderdale that the weather will be even warmer there next year.

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Papers: we presented a number of papers at ICSEI 2005. They are listed below.

In the Carpe Vitam symposium the following paper was presented:

In the Global Classroom symposium, the following papers were presented:

If you want any of these papers you need to visit the following website - www.learningschool.org

In the Bridges Across Boundaries symposium, the following papers were presented:

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Summary: If you would like to register your interest in joining the group for ICSEI 2006, email David Frost (dcf20@cam.ac.uk)

If you would like papers, email lfl@educ.cam.ac.uk

Global Classroom http://www.flatprojects.org.uk/evaluations/evaluationreports/globallearning.asp