ABSTRACT
We often use the metaphor of ‘the journey’ to describe our work with the schools involved in the IQEA project. The image of the journey captures well the non-prescriptive and investigative nature of our collaboration. There is however another, perhaps more important, aspect to our approach to school improvement as a journey. The image was beautifully captured by the head of a secondary school recently, when he said at one of our meetings that, ‘we journey as pilgrims, not as nomads’. What he was so evocatively reminding us of was that our collaborative approach to school improvement was based on a set of values that had characterized and disciplined our work together. So although we had all rejected the ‘blueprint’ or ‘top-down’ approach to change, we were not lurching from ‘fad to fad’ on a whim or impulse. Rather we were journeying in a direction that was, although not always well signposted, informed by goals, by a process, and by a vision that reflected a core set of values.
