• the vision of the school community and commitment to making a difference 
• staff, student, and parent awareness and understanding of social responsibility
•  systematic planning for whole school and classroom activities and learning opportunities 
• overall social climate of the school 
• the levels of social responsibility demonstrated by individual students

Vision and Commitment

From the first meeting of the leadership team, the social responsibility performance standards have played an important role in the development of a vision for the school. The standards have provided a framework and a point of reference for developing a caring, creative, and intelligent school where all students would feel safe, supported, and able to achieve. The standards have focused a variety of school improvement activities including goalsetting, action planning, monitoring, and evaluation. 

The standards provided a way of focusing the commitment of the school community, and a framework that could be used in planning and monitoring. They provided a point of departure for discussions and planning activities, and at the same time, a checkpoint that helped to ensure consistency of purpose. The impact of the standards was enhanced by the fact that students, parents, and staff found them relatively easy to understand, and relevant to the daily functioning of the school community. The standards also brought the credibility of their validation by teachers throughout B.C.

Awareness and Understanding

Over the first six months of the school year, students, parents, and staff developed a clear understanding of the nature and importance of social responsibility, and the efforts being made in their school. All students are aware that the school goal is to ensure that all students become socially responsible. All staff are engaged in providing learning activities that enhance social responsibility. All parents have been informed, first, about the importance of social responsibility to the school community; then, about the specific levels of social responsibility shown by their own children. 

Awareness and understanding of social responsibility have been developed largely through direct teaching, both in whole school settings, and in individual classrooms, where students learn about the importance of social responsibility, see various aspects modeled, and have opportunities for indivudal practice, goalsetting, and monitoring. Teachers consistently use the language of the performance standards both in their interactions with students and each other, and in the displays they provide in their classrooms and the hallway. Social responsibility is a priority for everyone; it reflected everywhere in the school physical and social environment.

Whole School and Classroom Learning

The leadership team and staff at Blakeburn attribute a large part of their success in developing social responsibility to the fact that it is not restricted to one aspect or part of the school day. It is integrated into classroom learning almost every day; it is part of regular daily and weekly whole-school activities (e.g., gatherings, morning messages), it is reflected in the interactions that noon hour supervisors have with students; it is an integral feature of the principal’s conversations with students, parents, and staff. 

In all of these settings, the language of the performance standards is used consistently, creating a sense of continuity and a clear understanding of the school expectations. Students, parents, and staff routinely talk about ‘expectations’ rather than bad/good behaviour. Students have focused opportunities to learn, reinforce and evaluate the skills a socially responsible person needs. All of the components of the school community try to work together to create a socially responsible community, and to make a difference in the development of each student.

School Climate

Six months after opening, Blakeburn Elementary School is a welcoming place, with a sense of calmness and openness. There are no line-ups or bells, and few behaviour problems. Teachers supervise only at recess (as provided for by contract), yet students seem to behave appropriately. Visitors to the school frequently comment on the level of engagement—particularly before and after school, at recess and lunch time, when most students appear to be intently focused on leisure or learning activities that they have chosen. 

Blakeburn is on its way to becoming the caring, creative, and intelligent community it aspires to be. Since September, behaviour incidents have decreased; those that occur are dealt with, in part, through use of the performance standards to create and monitor behaviour plans. 

The leadership team believe that a number of factors have contributed to developing a sense of caring community; one of these is the consistent use of the performance standards for social responsibility. They believe that the key feature, however, has been giving students responsibility for making wise, independent decisions in their out-of-class time, for example, about where they play, who they play with, and what activities they do. The school’s role is to provide a range of relevant, interesting choices; a set of clear expectations (in this case, the performance standards); explicit strategies and skills for solving problems (including specific steps to follow); and ongoing support.

Individual Student Growth

Data provided by classroom teachers, along with observations from staff, students, and parents, indicate that, overall, student levels of social responsibility improved substantially between October and April, with more students fully meeting and exceeding expectations for social responsibility. While both male and female students showed improvement, overall, boys—whose ratings in October were markedly lower than those of girls—showed more improvement. This is an extremely encouraging result. Initially, many boys and their parents resisted parts of the standards, often insisting, for example, that ‘boys will be boys’ or ‘you have to let them fight it out’ or ‘you need to teach them to stand up themselves and retaliate when someone hits or pushes them.” Systematic teaching of the skills, strategies, and values of social responsibility, along with consistent consequences for inappropriate behaviour (i.e., not yet meeting standards of social responsibility), have made a difference. After six months, the differences between male and female students have diminished; boys still behave like “boys” but most of them have developed new skills and strategies, particularly for solving problems. 

The performance standards provide students with a clear, realistic means of self-evaluation. Many students who are having difficulty are able to use the standards to see small steps they can take to improvement. Success is defined in attainable terms—moving just one level on the scale—and they are provided with the support and encouragement they need. 

Implications

Results at Blakeburn School have demonstrated that social responsibility can be improved –students do no come with fixed or permanent levels. With clear leadership and vision, a framework such as the performance standards to guide and monitor progress, a focused and comprehensive plan, and commitment from all parts of the school community, students can become more socially responsible, and schools can become more socially responsible places. 

Creating a socially responsible learning community, however, requires sustained effort. Schools that implement the performance standards, as part of an effort to enhance social responsibility, need to consider the following key factors that appear to have made a significant contribution to the success, to date, at Blakeburn: 

• committed leadership, willing to take responsibility for advocating, modeling, implementing, supporting, and monitoring efforts, as well as for ensuring that parents fully understand the initiative
• a systemic, realistic plan that makes social responsibility, including the standards, an integral part of the school operation
• a specific, agreed-upon focus (e.g., one category of the standards, such as “solving problems peacefully”) to guide activities and efforts (this may change over time)
• an integrated, ongoing approach that involves all members of the school community and all parts of the school day
• consistent use of the concepts and language outlined in the performance standards
• professional development for staff and parents to develop a consistent vision and understanding, along with strategies they can use

Limitations

Blakeburn Elementary School has been in operation for seven months. The preliminary results presented here should be regarded as tentative. Additional research and data collection will continue through to June 2003. As subsequent data are collected, they will help to deal with some of the limitations of the current report that include: 

• incomplete data—in some parts of the study, one or two classrooms were omitted from the analysis as the data were not yet available 
• compounding of grade level results with teacher (i.e., students at different grade levels were rated by different teachers, who may have been interpreting the scales slightly differently, being predisposed, for example, to rate students higher or lower than their colleagues) 
• no statistical information about the reliability of teacher ratings; although, wherever possible, teachers confirmed their ratings by consulting another professional who knew the students, no reliability study has been conducted to this point 
• teacher inexperience in using the scales may affect validity and reliability of their ratings, especially in October 
• because all students were evaluated by their own classroom teachers, and teachers (as is normally the practice) had the October ratings available when they evaluated students in April, it is possible that teachers expectations that students would improve caused them to inadvertently inflate their April ratings 

These limitations will be addressed in subsequent data collection and analysis.