Skip to main content

Weak 10 - Leadership

Agile in Education
A number of authors have looked at ways that ideas from agile software development might translate into schools. For example Steve Peha, a technologist and educator in the US, has worked extensively in applying the lessons of agile and lean to the classroom. He writes “We talk a lot in education about creating a culture of learning in our schools. But we don’t have reliable ways of creating this culture. Agile does” (Peha, 2011).
The Agile Manifesto
www.agilemanifesto.org
The Manifesto for Agile Software Development (Beck et al., 2001) was created in 2001 by a group of software development experts who had been exploring new ways of exercising their craft in the late 1990s. The manifesto provides four values and twelve principles to guide the agile software developer. The four values are: 
  • Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
  • Working software over comprehensive documentation
  • Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
  • Responding to change over following a plan
The values on the right are still important but we value the things on the left more

How would you rewrite the 4 values of the agile manifesto to apply to teaching and learning?


Peha (2011) provides some interesting ideas on how the agile manifesto can be reinterpreted to apply to schools, and how agile techniques might be used in the classroom. 
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Meaningful learning over measurement of learning

Stakeholder collaboration over constant negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan

Boris Gloger's ball game
The goal is to get as many of the balls as possible to pass through the hands of every team member in 2 minutes


An agile/lean glossary
There are a lot of terms used this week, so here is a brief glossary of the main ones
  • Lean - an approach from the Japanese car industry that emphasises efficiency in workflow
  • Agile - approach from software development that emphasises being adaptable to change and communication within teams and with customers
  • Kaizan - a process of continuous improvement (from lean manufacturing)
  • Kaikaku - a process of radical change/improvement (from lean manufacturing)
  • Scrum - an agile software development method that emphasises teamwork
  • Stand Up Meeting - a Scrum technique were daily team stand up meetings are held - each team member reports on what they did yesterday, what they will do today, and any obstacles they are facing
  • Sprint - a cycle of activity during a Scrum process - each sprint is the same length and must result in a specific outcome.
  • Kanban - a story board that tracks progress of story cards from to do, doing and done. 
  • WIP  - 'work in progress' - a limit on how many stories can be in 'doing' on a kanban board at any one time
  • Servant Leadership - a leadership theory that is often applied to leading agile teams
  • Situational Leadership - a leadership theory that adapts its styles according to the needs of followers
  • Kata - a term from martial arts that defines a continually repeated exercise
  • Trello - a software tool that allows you to add multiple columns and cards. It can be adapted for many tasks. including creating a kanban board
  • Pull and Push - In lean manufacturing, 'pull' is preferred to 'push' - in 'pull' the tasks are pulled by the workers when they are ready, not pushed at them
  • Flow - The way that tasks flow through a kanban board when pull and WIP limits are used
Kanban
One of the ideas that has been taken from Lean Production by Agile practitioners is Kanban - which means 'visual card' in Japanese. This enables ‘Pull’ and ‘Flow’ (Anderson, 2010).
For an example of how Kanban boards can be used to help children plan, see Princess Kanban. This is on the agileschool blog, which you may find interesting. More recent materials are now on the Agile Classrooms site.
You can ‘Visualise the workflow’ by having e.g. these four columns on the Kanban board:
Learning backlogThings to be learnt nextThings we are learningThings we have learnt
These boards can be done digitally or just on the wall with super sticky post-its. They can be individual or shared with a team. We’ll work today with one that is shared with the whole class. 
User Stories 
In software development and product management user story statements are often written on story cards following the format: As a (role) I want (something) so that (benefit). The idea is to capture what a user does or needs to do as part of his or her job function. It captures the "who", "what" and "why" of a requirement in a simple, concise way, often limited in detail by what can be hand-written on a small piece of paper. However, there is no requirement that all user stories should be written this way. Our 'learning stories' in the sessions will be written in a more unstructured style as they will be more open ended than software requirements.
Stories will be written on the story cards that move across the Kanban board columns. Each one will be a short, simple description of something to be achieved in a short time frame They need to be small and focused enough to be achieved in a short time frame and allow for success to be tested. 
Epics
A story that is too big is known as an ‘epic’ and has to be broken down into smaller stories. ‘Introduce BYOD to the school’ is an epic, and ‘Introduce BYOD to one pilot class’ is still too big. However, ‘Send a survey to families from one class asking if they are willing to provide a device for their child to bring to school’ is a smaller, story-sized step
3 C's
User stories have three critical aspects. We can call these Card, Conversation, and Confirmation. The card is the trigger for a deeper conversation between stakeholders about the solution and takes place over time and is mostly verbal. The confirmation is an acceptance test - how we know when the story is done. (Jeffries, 2001). A good story card will likely end up with the back covered with results of the conversation(s) and confirmation tests.
Todays’ story cards for the first 2 sprints are developed from a forthcoming book chapter “Agile Education, Lean Learning" (in this week's media). You can use this or any other sources today when learning and problem solving. We hole these User Stories guide you towards Meaningful Learning on how Agile and Lean Approaches could help you in your practice.
Trello
Trello is one of the tools that can be used to create Kanban style boards online. It is an easy-to-use, free and visual way to manage your projects and organise anything. Naturally, there are other tools too, but this one seems to be the most popular right now, and amongst teachers and their students too.
For this week's session, each location will have its own Kanban board (see below for links)
Scrum Masters
For the main activity in the session, each team will have a scrum master. The scrum master is the team’s servant leader, who needs to:
  • make sure that just one or two of your team cards are moved in “Things we are learning” at one time
  • write an acceptance test first in the description of the card - so that you know how to justify confirmation and record the outcome of the confirmation to the description before moving the card to “Things we have learnt”
  • record the team’s main conversations as comments
  • be ready for the stand up meeting on time, to share in 1min:
    • What was the Meaningful Learning on How Agile and Lean Approaches Could Help You In Your Practice? (That’s the goal for all team members!)
    • Was the learning confirmed (acceptance test)? What (same or new User Stories) are you going to work with on the next scrum? Any obstacles?
References
Anderson, D.J. (2010). Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business. Blue Hole Press.
Beck et al. (2001). Manifesto for Agile Software Development. Retrieved from http://agilemanifesto.org/
Jeffries, R. (2001). Essential XP: Card, Conversation, Confirmation. Retrieved from http://ronjeffries.com/xprog/articles/expcardconversationconfirmation/
Peha, S. (2011). Agile Schools: How Technology Saves Education (Just Not the Way We Thought it Would). InfoQ. Retrieved from https://www.infoq.com/articles/agile-schools-education

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 31 - Evaluate Your Impacts (Check)

Step 1: What is the observed impact after the ‘Take Action’ phase? As I detailed in last weeks blog post, the result of my pre and post number knowledge testing shows a significant increase in number knowledge when comparing children at the beginning of the year to week 7. However, I think it may be a bit rash to claim that this is entirely down to the application of gamification principles to my class program. I will detail why this is below. In terms of the qualitative interview data I gathered, a number of themes became apparent. Generally, students enjoyed the gamification aspects of the program. One boy stated, "I like the way I can get money for practising my times tables, it makes me want to do it". There did however seem to be a bit of a disconnect between children's mastery of basic number facts, and how readily they use them to solve problems. Step 2: How is the observed impact different from or similar to the anticipated one? As a school, we are having a focus ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Week 26 - Reflect on Your Inquiry (Take Action)

Step 1 (What): Describe something that is significant and has happened during your Inquiry so far A significant event that has occurred so far in my inquiry has been the results from some of the interviews that I conducted in week 2. My initial suspicion going into the inquiry was that the children in my class would show quite low engagement in maths. This suspicion was based on my observations of previous year 6 classes I have taught as well as interviews I conducted with a random sample of year 5s at the end of last year. The significant event was that generally speaking, the children I interviewed did not show particularly low engagement in maths. There was quite a large variation in the data produced which I will cover below, but generally speaking, children in the class seem to have more positive attitudes towards maths than in previous years. Step 2 (So What): Evaluate the most interesting/important/useful aspects of this event This finding surprised me. However, after referri...
2 comments
Read more

Week 6 leadership

Flipped preparation: Flipped preparation (required): Watch the video 'Leadership Theories and Styles', then identify a change initiative that you have been involved with, where you contributed to leadership or followership. Create a diagram that links your experiences to one or more specific leadership theories, with some explanation of these links Leadership Assessment 1 In part 1 of your LEADERSHIP 1 assessment you'll need to write (either individually, or in groups of two or three) a cohesive essay where you critically analyse the leadership of a change initiative that you were involved with in the past. Identify the leadership theories, styles and attributes used and evaluate their effectiveness. You can choose the leadership theories freely, they just have to be ones that are recognised in research literature. You then plan your leadership of a future digital and collaborative change initiative. Indicate how insights gained from reflecting on the past i...
Post a Comment
Read more