Mathew O'Hagan is a Lead Teacher at Meadows Primary School, City of Hume, Victoria, Australia. In 2014 he won a Hume Teacher's Scholarship to help him complete a Masters in Educational Management. This enabled him to travel to the USA and NZ to investigate the practical application of 'collective impact'. As a result he wrote a paper entitled ‘Making a case for a collective impact approach towards raising educational achievement in Hume City’.  This is critical reflection on 'collective impact' and how it might be applied to the Hume Global Learning Village going forward as a way of improving educational outcomes. [Leone Wheeler]

Mathew:

I used the scholarship money to investigate the concept of ‘collective impact’ and discover how it might be applied in Hume. Collective impact has emerged as the most promising approach for achieving high-impact community change. Around the world, communities (particularly in the U.S.A. but spreading rapidly) have sought to improve the quality of life of their citizens via collective impact: an approach to community engagement which is driven by the belief that no single program, organisation, or institution acting in isolation can bring about large-scale social change on its own. Collective impact strategies have been applied to promoting the value of lifelong learning (‘cradle to career’) and raising education achievement. I believe that the concept of collective impact could be a direction well worth considering for the Hume Global Learning Village as a new direction.

I used the scholarship money in two ways; firstly, to attend the Collective Impact Summit 2014 in Toronto, Canada; and secondly spend time in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA investigating the ‘Strive Partnership’: “Growing a stronger economy and lifting incomes will depend on getting better results in education, cradle to career".

Why ‘Strive’? It was one of the first collective impact approaches within education, was held up as an example of what could be achieved and much celebrated. However, recently it has come under criticism (including from the creators of the collective impact approach) and is now in a state of review and transformation.

The full text of Mathew's paper is featured below and attached...

Mathew's email contact is:  [email protected].gov.au