Creating enduring strength through commitment to schoolwide pedagogy

The term schoolwide pedagogy was once rarely heard and yet has now become a part of most discussions around school improvement. But what does it really mean and why is the presence of a schoolwide pedagogical framework important? Some would say that in their school the adoption of an authoritative approach such as Habits of Mind, Bloom's Taxonomies or the Productive Pedagogies is a schoolwide pedagogical framework. To some extent they are, but what is often lacking is the intellectual and social capacity that is built through collective professional sharing and articulation of strongly held beliefs about contextually relevant teaching and learning practices. Without this sense of ownership, teacher adoption ends up being sporadic at best with some teachers paying only lip service to imposed quality frameworks. In schools that have engaged with the processes of the Innovative Designs for Enhancing Achievements in Schools (IDEAS) project, personal pedagogical principles and authoritative pedagogical principles are contextualized by the school community as a whole. The story from one school is used to demonstrate the enduring strength of commitment when a school creates its own SWP.