Redefining Advanced Practitioners – by Colin Forrest

Redefining Advanced Practitioners

I am writing this as round three of the ETF funded Touch Consulting #APConnect initiative concludes, and what a finish it was. Energetic, emotional, and empowering, yet surely only a pause as there is too much momentum to allow for anything else. This blog is a somewhat self-indulgent reflection, a personal attempt at sensemaking from three years of looking from the outside into successive iterations of the programme. I try to capture how the immense variety of experiences and backgrounds of the participants, the energies they have and the strength of relationships that have been enhanced and fostered during the most difficult of times have all made a lasting impression on me. I draw on observations of the constellation’s element of the programme in particular and indulge in a brief exploration of an international setting in helping my understanding. If you are a member of this remarkable group, I hope you recognise something in my attempt to acknowledge the difference that you have made in so many settings and for so many people.

 

Changing identities

As with previous iterations of the programme, APs were passionate advocates for the importance of high-quality learning experiences for the learners within their own organisations. This time though AP influences extended into the virtual spaces that not only shaped learning but also enhanced mental wellbeing and engagement.

In these contexts, the notions of identity and, significantly, self-efficacy emerged as being even more important for the APs in year three of the programme.  I also encountered extensive new thinking and was taken to fresh and exciting places. This was exhilarating during an extended period of physical and mental restriction and highlights, for me, one of the paradoxes central to the success of what Advanced Practitioners achieve.

Paradoxical middle spaces

The navigation of the ‘middle space’ that APs occupy can be a lonely and isolating journey, especially during a pandemic. Increased pressures came from above and demands grew from those colleagues that APs were supporting.  APs are expected to be everywhere but have a home nowhere.  The #APConnect programme provided remedies, therapies, and communities that fostered a tremendous sense of camaraderie and solidarity.  These communities, or constellations, proved to be supportive and so much more, but they were not cosy spaces to inhabit.  They were characterised by dynamics that were challenging, levelling and empowering but crucially provided a ‘home’ for APs outside their organisations.

The architecture, led by Lou Mycroft, that created the conditions for members of the constellations to grow, draws on the botanical analogy of the ‘rhizome’. As part of Christina Donovan’s co-evaluation work in year three of the programme, Maria Zahariea, a participant, highlighted the importance of ‘impulses’, thus suggesting borrowing the idea of neurons from a sister discipline assists illuminating the dynamics that developed in round three.  The interplay between the interactions of APs in the organisationally neutral spaces of the communities of practice and the, often contested and highly structured, dynamics within individual AP’s own places of work became a central focus to understand. Maria’s impulses have their origin in the thinking of communities within the programme yet need to be carried by APs into organisations to inform practices and cultures if APs are really to make a difference.

Qualities and values

A couple of months ago, by serendipity, I came across a Aotearoa/New Zealand model of educational leadership that helped me understand more the relationship between where APs work and their engagement in the constellations that are part of the #APConnect programme. The Model[1] is grounded in four qualities:

• Manaakitanga: Leading with moral purpose
• Pono: Having self-belief
• Ako: Being a learner
• Āwhinatanga: Guiding and supporting

All four qualities worked for me in creating a lens through which to understand how APs are taking their collective appreciation of practice into their organisations to foster change. Āwhinatanga seems to capture this particularly well:

‘guidance and support for colleagues and students that is respectful and caring. It involves developing a high level of awareness of the needs and perspectives of staff and students and then taking action to care for others based on this awareness.

Middle and senior leaders who embrace āwhinatanga recognise and respond to the strengths and needs of those they lead, ensuring they feel appreciated and supported. This enables teachers to focus on improving the learning outcomes of their students.

For teachers who have been encouraged to take on leadership roles, āwhinatanga in the form of mentoring from middle and senior leaders is important for development and success’.

So, in these contexts, the spaces that APs occupy in their organisations would not take the form of a contested middle. Instead, APs would exemplify many features of leadership through being highly situated individuals characterised by elavated levels of care; carrying a strong sense of values that are congruent with their own, their organisation and peers outside their own settings; and a clear appreciation of learners’ needs.

 

Looking Forward

From such insights and from being on the periphery of many discussions within the #APConnect programme my admiration for those undertaking such roles has grown significant during round three of the programme. APs are immensely skilful problem solvers; they are champions of others and have a deep understanding of audience. APs are very good at boundary spanning, environmental scanning as well as quality planning. However, exemplifying these characteristics in organisations may come at a personal cost and this is where the real power of the AP Connect programme lies. The impact of the safe spaces and structures that have supported enhanced resilience and mutual support has been immense. Core principles and values underpinning practice have been made explicit and participants in the programme have grown well beyond how AP type roles were originally conceived three years ago. In redefining their roles APs have developed as Appreciative, Agile, and Action Practitioners but perhaps the time has come to flip how these roles are presented. Have APs now become more PAs, ‘Principled Activists’, in leading change?

 

 

[1] See: New Zealand Ministry of Education, Te Tāhuhu o te Mātuaranga, at https://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Leadership-development/Key-leadership-documents/Leading-from-the-middle/The-educational-leadership-model and https://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Leadership-development/Key-leadership-documents/Leading-from-the-middle/Key-leadership-qualities [accessed 28th March 2021]

 

By Colin Forrest, #APConnect Year 3 Co-Evaluation Team