the Learning Centre for education and values

Presentation: Importance of vision

All of the ideas discussed above are summarised in a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation which you may download here. Once downloaded the presentation slides are editable if you have a version of PowerPoint. The slides may be freely adapted for your own purpose.

Transforming school ethos: transforming learning

This reading is an address given by Professor Bart McGettrick to Bristol headteachers in April 2002. Its core idea is that schools need to be values driven, rather than systems driven and that this is a basic requirement for a transformative approach to citizenship education.

Writing a vision statement

Developing a vision for 'our school'.

Writing a vision statement - a summary of the advice from The Total Quality Toolkit by J Marsh.

Example vision and mission statements

Here are a collection of vision statements published by a variety of schools in the UK during 2001-02.

Many of these texts illustrate the finding that schools' statements of vision, of mission, of aims and values are often interwoven in several paragraphs. One difficulty with this form of statement is that the purpose of the vision statement - to describe the organisation's overall purpose in a memorable, inspirational way - is not achieved. (We have put in bold text what appear to us to be statements of vision in most of these texts.)

National Curriculum Resources

The school curriculum and the National Curriculum: values, aims and purposes.

Examples of incorporating 'education for sustainable development' principles into school policies.

From Vision to Mission

The leadership and management section of the 'Support and Access for Learners and Teachers' resource from Cheshire contains resources to support the development of a mission statement.

Where does vision come from? A vision expresses values and beliefs about what is considered to be of real importance in education. Sources of educational purpose and vision are:

philosophical:

• ideas and values about what counts as knowledge
• ideas and values about people - their worth - their potential, etc
• ideas and values about society

practical:

• basic language
• reading and number skills, including IT
• qualifications
• preparation for work

personal beliefs and hopes:

• about the world and individuals within it
• formed by reflection and personal experience.

Centrality of leadership

Leadership at all levels is the key factor in the improvement and success of schools.

Leaders help to move a community towards its vision. School effectiveness requires authentic leadership... Leaders with character ground their practice in purposes and ideas that define the schools they serve as special places and then act with courage and conviction to advance and defend these ideas. Sergiovanni (2000)

Locally determined

A school's vision needs to be generated, owned and supported by the whole school community, including pupils, parents and the local community. Identifying a distinctive local vision involves consultation and dialogue with all members and groups within the community. It should also involve a critical dialogue with religious and 'secular' traditions and worldviews that are present within the community.

Everyone who works in a school is entitled to unique personal vision of the way he or she would like the school to become, but has an obligation to uncover, discover, and rediscover what the vision is and contribute it to the betterment of the school community. R Barth (1990) Improving Schools from Within

Seeking change

At the heart of teaching is the notion of change. Teachers seek to change the way students think, feel and perceive the world and their place in it. A school's vision provides an image of the sort of direction in which that change might happen.

Standards and moral vision

Moral vision and standards are two sides of the same coin that cannot easily be separated. Schools with an effective vision and ethos are generally also effective in terms of standards and achievement. Personal development and learning achievement together constitute attainment.

Participatory

In order to drive the practices of a school community at all levels vision needs to be drawn from the views about what matters to people in that community and what sort of future community they want to create.

Nothing so professionalises work in schools as educators who create within the school house visions of good education. R Barth (1990) Improving Schools from Within

Future 21st century

Taking vision and values seriously is an increasingly important part of professionalism in education, particularly in a rapidly changing and unpredictable world. Schools should also relate and include the aims of citizenship to the broader aims of their schools and publish these.

Mission is localised vision

To be useful, an educational vision has to be made specific in terms of a school's particular context, its history, locality and community for example. A mission statement tries to do this. It is a statement of aims and objectives that flow from an educational vision.

Establishing your vision

Asking yourself why you teach is important in understanding and developing your vision: this is a clear focus of what you want to achieve. Establishing a focused vision will give you a sense of meaning and purpose, and the inspiration and motivation to achieve your vision.

Interactive Task 1

Create your own 'why ladder'. Click here.

Interactive Task 2

Using your last answer from the 'why ladder' exercise above, take a few minutes to write a few sentences to express your answer in more detail - this could be a personal vision statement. To give you an idea see Example 2, just below:

Vision statements and mission statements often have considerable overlap. Sometimes this causes 'vision statements' to be rather long and not very memorable. It is helpful to think of a process: from vision to mission.

A mission statement makes an educational vision useful. The mission statement tries to make the school's vision specific in terms of its history, locality and community. It is a statement of aims and objectives that flow from an educational vision.

A school's sense of mission involves the whole community: students, teachers, parents, managers, governors and others. If you are a class teacher it will be best to work with your managers and curriculum leaders to ensure that there is consistency between the educational vision of teachers and the mission of the school or faculty or department.

Those with managerial or curriculum leadership responsibilities will find it useful to explore the links in the Resources section on the left.

In the next step of the Learning Centre – Values – we will see that, as well as providing a basis for all school aims and objectives a mission statement also provides a cluster of core values which are very useful tools in delivering the mission statement at several levels:

• curriculum delivery in the classroom
• whole school management
• external relations.