Podcast Season 1 Ep. 6: Transformative Education with the Co-Authors of The Spiral Playbook
We are excited to have Dr. Judy Halbert and Dr. Linda Kaser, co-authors of The Spiral Playbook (2017), System Transformation for Equity and Quality (2016), Spirals of Inquiry (2013), Leadership Mindsets: Innovation and Learning in the Transformation of Schools (2009) and with Helen Timperley, A Framework for Transforming Learning in Schools: Innovation and the Spiral of Inquiry (2014).
They lead the Transformative Educational Leadership Program at the University of British Columbia. Prior to this, Linda and Judy developed and taught graduate leadership programs at the University of Victoria and Vancouver Island University.
Linda and Judy have served as teachers, principals, district leaders and policy advisors with British Columbia’s Ministry of Education. They are the founders of the Networks of Inquiry and Indigenous Education. In 2019, along with NOIIE leader Debbie Leighton Stephens, they were awarded the prestigious Cmolik Prize for the enhancement of public education in British Columbia.
Deeply committed to achieving equity and quality for all learners and networking for innovation and improvement across systems, they served as Canadian representatives to the OECD international research program on Innovative Learning Environments. Their work has gone global, supporting inquiry networks in British Columbia, the Yukon, England, Catalonia, Spain, Sweden, New South Wales, the Northern Territory, New Zealand and Queensland.
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If you prefer reading to listening, you can find the full transcript of the podcast below.
Podcast Transcript
Hi, my name is Blue. And I'm the host of this new podcast, the 21st-Century Teacher with Live It Earth. And my job is to ensure that our teachers and students get the most out of our programs. This new podcast series is just one of the ways I'm going to be supporting our community of educators with a monthly conversation with a special guest educator discussing a different aspect of 21st-century teaching and learning.
Today, I'm talking to the dream team that is Dr. Judy Halbert, and Dr. Linda Kaser. Leading the Transformative Educational Leadership program at the University of British Columbia. Linda and Judy have served as teachers, principals, district leaders, and policy advisors with British Columbia's Ministry of Education. They are the founders of the Networks of Inquiry and Indigenous Education, and have also served as Canadian representatives to the OECD international research program on innovative learning environments. They've worked around the world supporting Inquiry Networks, both in British Columbia and the Yukon, the Northern Territory, New Zealand and Queensland, Sweden, Spain, Catalonia and New South Wales. They're also the co-authors of several books, including The Spiral Playbook that came out in 2017. And they have another book launching very soon. I'm really excited to have them on the show today. So please enjoy.
Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today, I'm really excited to talk to you about the work that you do.
And, we're excited to be here. Thank you very much for the invitation and the opportunity. Looking forward to it.
So, let's dive straight in. And I want to ask about the book that you co- authored, which is The Spiral Playbook. Can you explain what the Spiral of Inquiry is?
Yeah, I'll, you know, start on this one. Linda and I've been working with a network of schools in British Columbia for over 20 years now. And, we started, we knew a few things…we knew that to get teachers engaged, it had to be through curiosity. And so we invited them to participate by posing a question, seeing it through, telling us what they've learned. And over time, that developed into a cycle of inquiry. At the same time, we became aware of the work of Helen Timperley, who was from the University of Auckland in New Zealand, who was doing some really superb work, using inquiry as the basis for literacy and numeracy improvement in New Zealand. And when we heard her work, and she heard our work, we thought we really need to get together. So we did, we started in the mud season in Northern Colorado, trying to throw, literally throwing everything that we knew on the wall, and came up with what we call the Theory of Everything. We were thinking about, what is it that principals and teachers need to know, to help kids thrive right now? We decided, well, maybe that was a little bit too ambitious. So we narrowed it down to say, could we collectively put together what a genuinely curiosity-based cycle of inquiry would look like? And over the next couple of years, it took time for us to really hash out every single idea and come to what looks like a very simple framework. But it's actually quite complex because there are so many ideas underneath it.
There're six stages to it. But at the heart, it is asking adults, teachers, principals, support staff, cultural workers, to really be curious about what's going on for our learners. And how do we know? So it's not just what are our assumptions or opinions. But what's the evidence to say, kids are this, that, or the other thing. You know, they're happy, they're thriving, they're anxious, they're struggling in math…well, what's our evidence for that? And then to really getting sharp on why does that matter? And so then what are we going to do about it? So we start with scanning, which is really asking some powerful questions about what's going on for kids. Then we narrow it down to a focussing, that if we're working on too many things at once, we're not going to accomplish anything. So really trying to say, what's the area that'll give us the greatest impact? Then the next stage, which I think it's maybe our favorite in some ways because it's where we have to grow up as a profession. We say, well, okay, we know what the situation is, we know what we are wanting to work on. How is it that we're contributing in our actions and our practices and our approaches right now to the situation for young people?
It requires us to be critical, to be reflective, and to be brave in taking a look at our own stuff. Then we need to learn some new things. And that's really important too, to be undiscriminating, and what is it that we need to learn, how are we going to learn? And, and where's the best source for the learning that we need to engage in, then we're going to try some new things. And then we're going to check to see whether we're making enough of a difference. And it's an ongoing spiral. It's a spiral, intentionally, because it never ends and we'll just go deeper and deeper. And our goal ultimately is it becomes a way of life, that this just becomes a professional way of approaching what we do to improve the life chances of the young people that we serve. So initially, we wrote kind of a bigger book called Spirals of Inquiry. And then we were asked by a Canadian group called C21 if we could write a shorter version and that was The Spiral Playbook. And we have just finished, it'll be out in May, a bigger version called Leading Through Spirals of Inquiry, which has taken everything that we've learned over the last 20 years, and really written it in a way to help beginning teams approach this work.
Amazing! So it seems to me that curiosity is a big piece of the work that you do. And I'm wondering, one of the phrases that I've come across a few times, and I'm interested in you elaborating a little bit on this, is that you believe that every learner crosses the stage with dignity, purpose and options, can you just explain what that means to you?
We'd love to explain it. Because it's our favorite phrase. It needs adults who are curious about that, too. I guess we'd always want the word curiosity, but dignity, you know, every learner deserves to go through their schooling experience being treated as a responsible, respect deserving human being. They don't deserve any trash talk. We can see now in the world where that leads to. And no, it's just not right. And purpose, we know there's very good research on the growth mindset researchers, that young people, who have a sense of purpose, no matter what their backgrounds are, if they have a sense of purpose, and they know that they want to serve their community in some way that's meaningful. They're very well equipped to navigate life, because they see it as meaningful because this purpose matters to them. And then, you know, unfortunately, in the past I think before we drew as much attention to it as we have, some young people graduated from our school system in British Columbia and the Yukon, but they didn't really have genuine options, because they had, you know, communications instead of English. And they had, you know, trades math instead of mathematical understandings. And, you know, you can go through…I think one time, we were working with our Indigenous Director at the provincial level, and there were 3000 kids who had taken Biology 12, and one was Indigenous. Now that is just ridiculous, right? Like, that's a shame, but it's beyond embarrassment, to just wrong.
So dignity, you are treated with respect. So you're not in distress because you're being bullied or bad-mouthed or whatever for your orientation, you're indigeneity, your background, your degree of wealth, the outfit that you wear, all of the different ways that we can be cruel to each other. You have to have a sense of purpose because otherwise, life isn't very meaningful and causes bad mental health challenges. And you've got to have genuine options. So you need a preparation that allows you to be resilient and to get the, you know, if you want to go on to there's some evidence in Canada that if you get two years of post-secondary training of some kind, really anytime that you have very much better health outcomes, you have a better relationship or a better family. Because you're pursuing something that you know, that is well designed for your interests, and it doesn't matter whether that's filmmaking or, you know, a degree at a University or being a world-class chef, or whatever it is, you're on track to do something for at least a period of time that that is meaningful to you. So it's very important to us and each one of those words was a crowdsource with, we've worked with about 1000 graduate students. And so we would always talk about, well, you know, it's very nice that we've got, you know, 82% of the kids now graduating, or whatever it was at the time. But it's got to be every kid, anything else is just not fair. And we're a fairness profession, we're supposed to give education, and public education is supposed to give every learner a hand up.
Let's get on it!
With all that in mind, what are the limits of the school system as it is?
I think a major limitation is our own mindsets, and how much we let that drive us. I mean, we have, because we work in England too…right now, in British Columbia, we have the most opportunity and the greatest degree of freedom and choice around designing things. So if we want to run a totally Outward Bound expeditionary program of the kind that interests you, we can do that. And lots of places are. So, what we see is a big power surge from inside the classroom to outdoors. Schools are building outdoor classrooms, they're taking kids out, there's talking about field studies instead of field trips. That's huge and there's, you know, wonderful books and films and people and a movement of educators. And of course, Indigenous people are leading the way on a lot of this. So the barriers are smaller sometimes than we think they are.
I really agree with Linda, you know, we've been working in England for the last 10 years and are very sympathetic to the policy environment that has genuine constraints for teachers there. And the work that we do there is through the whole education network, which is really devoted to creating a more holistic, rounded experience for kids in schools. And even in that difficult policy environment with a lot of testing, all of the stuff that goes on in, particularly in English schools, we're still still seeing the creativity, the imagination and the courage of teachers doing wonderful work. And in British Columbia, again, we've got one of the freest systems in the world. So the limitations are really our own imagination, and our own worries about what's actually allowed and not allowed. When we really probe, we've got a lot of freedom.
I think another barrier, I was reading a grad paper this morning from your neck of the woods, actually. And, let me preface this remark by saying it really helps if you have good principles. And we do have a lot of principals in British Columbia, who are embracing all of these ideas and leading the way and removing barriers for their staff, with if they're in good districts, with district help to move things forward. And I think we're beginning to get early childhood right. This principle is going to have an early childhood center in her school. That means that kids who perhaps or you know, don't have all of the kind of parenting background that you do, are going to have a very rich experience, and they're going to move into the system in a much healthier and happier way. And I think as that expands, and as that sector comes over into the Ministry of Education because that's happening a year or so from now. That's really going to help. And you know, that was a barrier before because lots and lots of kids, you know, it tended to be the middle-class kids who were getting the early support, and we know that early support really matters.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Now, I would like to ask, what is the First People's Principles of Learning? What could you share about that?
So, the original derivation of that came from when the First Peoples English course was developed, probably about 12 years ago. And there was a there were a group of Indigenous leaders from FNESC (the First Nations Education Steering Committee), different groups from around the province coordinated by the Ministry of Education that came together and decided on these eight principles that everybody could agree with. They didn't represent any one particular group. They're not Haida or Tsimshian, or Sinixt. Up there, they're shared. And they have become extremely important in our work and in the work across the province of saying that we need to incorporate these Principles of Learning into the experiences of every learner.
If you think about just one that learning takes patience and time, how important that is when you're trying to learn a new skill, instead of racing through the curriculum, because we have this, you know, feeling that everything has to be done quickly. Or learning that our actions have consequences. And we would like everybody to learn that. And that learning is about contributing to the self, the family, the community. So, they're just wonderful principals for all of us. And interestingly, Linda and I do quite a bit of international work and we've worked in Australia and Spain, Sweden, England, Hawaii, and everywhere we go, we introduce the BC First Peoples Principles of Learning. And regardless of the context, people can relate to it, relate to them, and feel a sense of I think, calmness in understanding that there is a different worldview that can actually speak to the hearts of people all over the place. So they're really powerful. And, and it is a real gift that we as a profession have been provided with this set of understandings.
You know, a better worldview.
Yeah.
Yeah, we need that right now.
Because they've been field-tested for, you know, over 20,000 years or from time immemorial, whichever way you want to think about it. And if you think, gee, we have to get along together. What should our learning principles be? Which is how these evolved in Indigenous communities. That a lot of the major problems, global warming, getting along…Indigenous people were working that out, centuries ago.
So, how can teachers at a practical level, integrate Indigenous wisdom into the class? I mean, we hear a lot about, you know, introducing Indigenous Perspectives. Is that it? Is there more?
Yeah, there's a lot more. And you know, I don't feel particularly capable of giving a great answer to that. But I said that there are people who can, and in most school districts now, there are wonderful Indigenous people supporting the work. I know that you're in the Slocan Valley, so Gail Higginbotham is the person in your district. So there's now increasingly great Indigenous educators providing support directly to classrooms. We've gone a long way from doing a unit in grade four to saying how can we learn every step along the way? And it's much, much more than just let's study a unit of, you know, Haida.
I think, I actually think we can give quite a good answer, because we were asked by a colleague of ours, a wonderful woman, who sadly has passed away, but she was Director of Education, when we were on loan to the Ministry and her name was Trish Rosborough. And she said, you know, do you think you could…people were signing Aboriginal Education Enhancement agreements but they weren't necessarily getting to the classroom level. And she said, could you do something about it? We said, Trish, we'd love to do something about it. And we worried about it. Because in the first year, probably most people started with a book, a book written by an Indigenous person. And they started a discussion with their class, and they read the book, and they thought about what it meant to have the Potlatch disappear, and have the culture taken away. And as it turned out, that was a good start. Because once people started, they were hooked and when, you know, the learning principles came along, so that people could begin to embrace those. And then as they got to know their local cultural advisors, and their local Indigenous peoples, and formed relationships and communities of interest, then everything became possible in terms of moving one's understanding. So everybody has played a role in that, the Teacher Union has a very good process for a blanket ceremony that teaches a lot of things. So people were able to go to the deeper understandings of what it meant that we were a colonizing society, that we were settlers that, you know, there were privileges that we had, that we need to become aware of. All of that deeper work came along.
And so now, you know, we're not a Nirvana, but we are, I think, in Canada, in a kind of leading place, because the people who have stepped forward and the universities have stepped forward in a really good way. We're affiliated with UBC. The number of Indigenous young people and, you know, older people going through the Indigenous education program there has just skyrocketed. We had a very advanced Dean who cared about that. And as all of that work takes hold, you know, we have a number of Indigenous superintendents now in districts. Which wasn't the case 10 years ago. So, I think some people are still nervous because teachers kind of want to do the right thing. And, and they don't want to get, you know understandably, they're under a lot of stress.
Yeah, 100% I've heard it a bunch.
Yeah, they don't want to get in trouble. And so, you know, when you read about some of the issues about appropriation. We got really good advice from a Tsimshian woman who works in Nanaimo, Lady Smith. You know, she said, you want to know how to do Indigenous education, really well? Make an Indigenous friend, and then ask them. And that has been such great advice. Because if we, you know, are up against some situation where we think we don't know the protocol, or what the right thing to do is, we don't bother them. But we phone Joe, or we phone Laura, or we phone Gail.
We’ve got lots of people to ask, or one of our buddies.
There’s a network, yeah.
Yeah. And, you know, Indigenous people, in our experience, at least all have a really good sense of humor. So if you're honest, you know, you'll just laugh together that you were such a bozo and then there's sort of a forgiveness, and then you move forward as long as you've got a good spirit about it.
So I'm wondering, with all this being said, how are we addressing the needs of vulnerable kids that transition through multiple schools?
That, you know, that's a really important question. And it's a huge challenge. And I think that where we lose kids is in those points of transition, you know, and particularly kids that are vulnerable when they move from home to foster care, or from school to school as family circumstances change, or from elementary school to middle school to secondary school. Those points of transition are sometimes brutal for kids who are struggling.
Right now we've got a grant through the Vancouver Foundation on Improving Transitions for Indigenous kids, we've got our third cohort of schools starting working with that right now. And we had the report done after the first cohort of schools, and the theme for that was being belonging and becoming. And we're just starting to learn the importance of those three words, and applying that to all kids, not just to Indigenous kids. But the importance of identity, so of when a child moves schools, that there's time spent and getting to know who they are, and getting to appreciate their own identity and giving them a space in the school for their identity to be valued. And then the importance of belonging, you know, belonging to your class, belonging to your social group, belonging to the school community. And then the importance of becoming, feeling that through your being at school, that you're becoming a better, stronger person. So those are kind of the foundational pieces that we're working with in these schools that are focused on transitions right now. And it's I think, probably it's the next massive challenge. Is really identifying what happens to those kids that that do move a lot, and how are we supporting them? And what can we learn about better forms of support? We think that this work on transitions can inform that, but it's a much bigger question.
What about the UBC’s, Transformative Educational Leadership Program that you're working on? Can you tell us about that?
Sure. Well, I'll start with…early in the 2000s, Linda and I were working at the Ministry, we had been seconded from our school districts and, and as we had a chance to really take a look at what was happening in the province. And we were concerned by the number, and this isn't to be critical, but the number of American Master's Programs that were being provided in BC that had very little, if any content connected to Canada, let alone to Indigenous understandings. And we thought that that was not good enough, that as a province we could do better. So we we pitched to the Deputy Minister at the time that we would develop a Master's Program that included Indigenous understandings and a Western Canadian perspective and we got the go-ahead to do that.
So we started a program at UVic in 2005, I think. Anyway, we ran a program at UVic for five years, then we were invited to do a similar program at Vancouver Island University. And we did that, and that's now I think there's probably about 20 cohorts have gone through both either the UVic, or the VIU program. And then when we were at VIU, happily doing this Master's Program, we were approached by the Dean at at UBC, Bly Frank, who was, you know, kind of our hero, and he said, “look, you're doing a really great job at Master's Programs”. And we had effectively turned the tide that there were now far more Canadian master's degrees for principals and vice-principals. Because it's a requirement to be a principal or vice-principal in BC, you have to have a master's degree. He said “you've had some success with that. But what we need is something after the master's program”. And so we had the challenge of developing what's called the TELP program. So it's for people that have a master's degree, are possibly interested in doctoral level work, and are interested in system change. And for us, the candidate for the program is anybody who thinks about the system and thinks about something bigger than their own classroom. So it's a mixed cohort. We have kindergarten teachers, we have deputy ministers, we have superintendents, principals, vice-principals, everybody, together. And it's a year-long program that's really focused on some key ideas with the culminating challenge for them to design an intervention or an approach to change something for the better, whether it's in their own school, or their district, or their region. So that's where we're at. We've got an international cohort this year, we've got five Australian directors in the program, as well as a vice principal from China, and 60 BC and Yukon educators.
Wow, that’s amazing!
Yeah, we love it. So we've had, as Linda said, we probably had 1000 grad students, I think we've probably had more than that, actually. But we've had a lot. And there was an impact study done of the TELP program last year, that you know, was really positive in terms of the difference that it's making to the participants. So we love it.
I'm really interested if there are any examples of this process, in any way transforming community. If it's been implemented in a school, by any of the graduates, are there any examples of that? That you can think of?
I think the most interesting example will be the ambitiousness of the Yukon. Nicole Morgan, who's the Deputy Minister now. I mean, they've got a very interesting system. Anyway, she's taken the key concepts and she has amalgamated them all into a vision for the Yukon. And they are going about things in a radically different way than they did before. And I am confident that that will show success over time.
I'll give a couple of school examples. One is from South Okanagan Secondary School in Oliver. And through their scanning process, they saw that there were a group of pretty disenfranchised grade nine and ten students. And so they spent a fair bit of time talking with the kids about what would help them be more engaged. And clearly it was getting outdoors, being more connected to the community. And they developed what's called the EPIC program, which is Experiential…something something something. Anyway, it's a terrific program, where for a semester the kids are out on the land, working with elders, working in the community. And they are, you know, it's had a significant impact. Now, the network connection to this is that they got the idea from a small school in Port Hardy and so then they took that, interviewed the kids, developed this program at South Okanagan Secondary that's now being applied in other places, so it's a spread.
Another example is a vice principal in Delta School District. And the focus of her TELP final project was on student leadership. And she used the Spiral of Inquiry and the decision-making framework which was designed, co-designed by Brook Moore, who was also a TELP graduate now on as part of the TELP teaching team, in, you know, in collaboration with some decision making scientists. Anyway, the vice-principal, the kids were identifying areas that they were concerned about in the school. And there were three different groups, they were looking at cyberbullying, they were looking at loneliness, and they were looking at racism. And through their work, they became connected, this group of kids became connected with some researchers at Harvard, they developed the whole approach, they are now working with student leaders in four other high schools. Some of them have gone on to graduate university, but they're coming back. So there's this whole kind of student leadership movement, where kids are way beyond designing the school dance or the activity days, but using what they've learned with the support of the adults to really tackle issues that are of direct relevance to them. So both of those are kind of TELP graduate stories that we think have the potential for quite a big impact.
Yeah, it's fantastic. I'm really, really excited by the work that you're doing has been really, really nice listening to your stories.
Well, it's all…thank you, Blue. I mean, we feel very privileged. I mean, clearly, we've been at this for a long time. But we love it and what fuels me is seeing the changes that are happening for people individually and then as a result happening for them in the communities that they work in.
Yes, fantastic.
Anyway, thanks a lot for inviting us to be part of this, Blue. And you know, I'm really curious about learning more about what you do. So we'll follow up.
Brilliant, well enjoy your holiday! And yeah, be in touch.
Yeah. Okay.
Thanks a lot. Take care.
Bye.
Thanks for joining us on the 21st-Century-Teacher, and we look forward to seeing you next time. Please do subscribe so you don't miss out on the next show. And also don't forget to check out our fantastic online learning platform, which is liveit.earth. Thanks again, and we'll see you soon.