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Session 5. Quality Ideas, Adapting and Presenting Your Findings
Objective. Compare Cambridge and IB learner-quality ideas with your national curriculum goals, decide what to adopt, adapt or ignore, and write and present a short briefing with evidence, options, trade-offs and a recommendation.
Education systems also describe the kind of person they hope pupils will become. Cambridge lists five learner attributes and the IB lists ten; your national curriculum has its own aims. This final session helps you read such lists as sources of wording, decide with a simple matrix what to adopt, adapt or leave, and then present your findings to a school board in a way that leads to a decision rather than a long discussion.
Key ideas
Cambridge and IB: learner qualities
- The Cambridge Learner Attributes Guide names five attributes: confident, responsible, reflective, innovative and engaged. The guide says they help students enjoy learning and succeed, and it covers school culture, appropriate challenge, learning to learn, deliberate practice and wellbeing.
- The IB programme brochure lists ten learner profile attributes: inquirers, knowledgeable, thinkers, communicators, principled, open-minded, caring, risk-takers, balanced and reflective. Both lists describe the kind of person a school hopes to help grow, not an exam syllabus.
Qualities need evidence, not posters
- A quality only counts if you can point to what pupils do. 'Reflective' might show as a weekly note in the notebook on what the pupil would change; 'engaged' as the number of pupils who ask a question in a lesson. Choose one observable sign per quality, and one place where it can be seen: a notebook, a lesson, a project.
- Compare with the national curriculum: it likely already names values and competences in its own words. Do not add a second list. Use the Cambridge or IB wording only to sharpen a conversation about what your own goals look like in lessons.
Adopt, adapt or ignore
- For each idea, score five things from 1 to 3: fit with your local problem, cost, teacher time, risk to trust and evidence you can collect. A cheap idea that fits the problem and needs one pilot is 'adapt'. An idea that needs a new law, new staff or a new building is 'ignore for now'. 'Adopt' is rare, because context almost always changes something.
- Write the trade-off in one sentence: 'We gain X, we give up Y.' Example: 30 minutes of monthly mentoring gains a stronger first year for new teachers and gives up 30 minutes of the mentor's planning time. Good leaders say what they give up.
Presenting to a board or department
- Decision makers have limited time. A two-page briefing note should hold: the question; two or three findings, each with one piece of evidence; two options with their trade-offs; your recommendation with cost, time and owner; the risks; and how you will check success. Put the decision you ask for in the first line.
- In a five-minute talk say the question, the one finding that surprised you, the recommendation and the ask. Prepare answers to three likely questions: What will it cost? Why not copy the framework fully? How will we know it worked? Share limits honestly: frameworks are one country's view and your sample is small.
Three outcomes of a decision matrix
Adopt
Rare
- Fits the problem
- Low cost and time
- Needs no change
Adapt
Most common
- Fits part of the problem
- Shrink it to your context
- Pilot and check evidence
Ignore for now
Be honest
- Needs law, staff or buildings
- High trust risk
- Revisit if conditions change
From attribute words to evidence in a notebook
The Cambridge guide treats its five attributes as learning habits that schools can build through culture, appropriate challenge, learning to learn, deliberate practice and wellbeing. The IB's learner profile lists ten qualities, from inquirers to reflective. Both lists are wide, and a school can say 'we develop reflective learners' with a poster and no change in lessons.
Make each word visible. Choose a sign pupils produce: a weekly line on what they would change, a question asked in class, a note on how they helped a classmate. Choose a place where you can see it: notebooks, a project, a short exit slip. If you cannot name the sign and the place, the word is still a hope, and it should not appear in a report as an achievement.
Deciding what to adopt, adapt or ignore
A decision matrix keeps the discussion fair. Score each idea from 1 to 3 on fit with your local problem, cost, teacher time, risk to trust and the evidence you can collect. Ideas that score well on fit and cost but need a little time become pilots. Ideas that need a new law, new staff or a new building are 'ignore for now'.
Then write the trade-off in a sentence: what you gain and what you give up. Boards respect leaders who name costs. Finally decide how success will be checked and by whom, before you start. Without that, a pilot cannot end honestly, and the board has no reason to trust the next proposal.
Examples from the classroom
Making 'reflective' visible
Scene. Dilnoza, a Grade 6 teacher in Samarkand, chooses the Cambridge attribute 'reflective' because her national curriculum aims speak of independent learners. For six weeks every Friday pupils write two lines in their notebooks: 'one thing I did well' and 'one thing I would change'. She samples ten notebooks at the end. Seven pupils wrote something specific, and she asks them to share a favourite line.
Insight. A learner quality becomes real when you name an observable sign and where it can be seen.
A matrix that ended in 'adapt'
Scene. Principal Jasur in Bukhara scores three ideas: growth descriptors, the 30-minute mentor talk and the task audit. The mentor talk scores highest on cost and fit; descriptors score lowest on trust risk because of last year's score sheet. He decides to adapt the mentor talk with a pilot and to ignore descriptors for now, writing in the briefing why.
Insight. A matrix makes the reasons visible, including the reason for leaving an idea.
Forty slides to two pages
Scene. Aziz first prepares 40 slides for a board in Samarkand. After a board member asks 'What do you want us to decide?', he rewrites to two pages: the ask in the first line, two findings, two options with trade-offs, a six-week pilot costing only printing and 30 minutes a month, and a re-audit of 12 tasks. The board approves it in ten minutes and asks for the results in January.
Insight. Decision makers need the ask, evidence, options and a way to check, not the whole research.
Common pitfalls
- Adding a list of attributes to the school mission without any sign or place where it can be seen.
- Showing a table of rankings as the main evidence in a briefing.
- Hiding the trade-off or cost because the idea sounds good.
- Presenting without saying what decision you want, so the board discusses instead of deciding.
Decide, Write the Briefing and Rehearse Five Minutes
- Trios (10 min): read Table A. Choose two learner qualities from Cambridge or IB that match a goal in your national curriculum or school mission. For each write one observable sign and where it can be seen (a notebook, a lesson, a project).
- Trios (10 min): fill Table B, the decision matrix, for three ideas from this course (for example growth descriptors from Session 2, the 30-minute mentor talk from Session 3, the task audit from Session 4). Score 1-3 on each of five criteria and mark adopt, adapt or ignore for now.
- Pairs (15 min): write the key lines of your briefing on Table C: the ask, the question, two findings with evidence, two options with trade-offs, recommendation with cost and time, risks, and how you will check. Maximum one A4 page for now.
- Part B, trios (15 min): rehearse a five-minute talk, one person speaking, one playing a board member who asks the three questions in Table D, one timing and noting where the speaker was unclear. Rotate so each person speaks once, three minutes each if time is short.
- Alone (10 min): revise your briefing using the notes and write your leadership task from the Kit: present to a real audience and bring the decision or feedback back.
Your facilitator will guide you through this activity in the session.
Questions to discuss
- Which idea ended as 'ignore for now', and what would have to change to bring it back?
- What did the board member's question reveal that your note had not covered?
- What trade-off are you most reluctant to say aloud, and why must you?
Reflect
- Which of my school's favourite words, such as 'critical thinking', could I not yet point to in a notebook?
- Who decides in my school, and what do they need on one page?
- What is my first pilot, and who owns it?
Try it tomorrow
- Pick one learner quality from the national curriculum and write one observable sign and one place to see it.
- Fill the decision matrix for two ideas from this course and find the lowest score in each.
- Write the first line of your briefing as a request: 'Please approve ...' and test it on a colleague.
Further reading and links
Choose what to adapt with a simple matrix, state the trade-off, put the decision you want in the first line and bring evidence and a plan to check.