From 10 - 14 March WIS will host a team of visitors from NEASC that will help us start our re-accreditation cycle with NEASC with a Preparatory Visit. (NEASC Preparatory Visit Schedule)
In the past months, WIS has prepared a Preparatory Report that was submitted to the team of peer visitors a month ago. The three visitors, Dr. Joseph Kotarski (Associate Director CIE Commission – NEASC, USA, Mr. Vincent Tago ( Senior Master, African Leadership Academy, South Africa) and Mrs. Lisa Simelane (Director of Teaching & Learning, Waterford Kamhlaba United World College of Southern Africa, Swaziland) will be spending the week at WIS to primarily look at the impacts of our teaching and learning in and around the classroom.
Below is an explanation of the WHAT and WHY of international accreditation with NEASC:
International School Accreditation
The NEASC accreditation process encourages school improvement through a process of continuous Self-Reflection and peer review. The award of NEASC accredited status indicates that the member school has achieved high standards of professional performance and is committed to continuing growth and development.
By partnering with schools around the world to promote transformative approaches to teaching and learning, initiate and engage in future-oriented forums, and expand pathways to accreditation, NEASC furthers its mission to ensure high quality, learner-centered education for all students and develop the understandings, aptitudes, dispositions, values, and competencies they need to become successful and responsible citizens of the world. (International School Accreditation)
A fundamentally different approach to school accreditation
While traditional accreditation asks schools to focus on what they do for students, ACE Learning invites schools to reflect internally on what actually impacts learning. At NEASC, we define Impact as a long-term transformational change we wish to see in learners over time. Schools have often gauged their success as outputs like standardized test scores, university admissions, summative assessments, or similar forms of traditional academic achievement. NEASC encourages schools to expand their understanding of success to include impacts that describe the school’s highest aspirations for its learners — and encourages schools to look for ways to measure aspirational statements and design programs and structures to do so.
ACE Learning offers a framework for schools to reflect deeply on their 1) foundational structures and processes, and 2) their effectiveness as a learning community.
Being accredited on the ACE Learning Pathway:
strengthens both the school’s Foundations and their approach to transformational learning
focuses on the Impact of actions on student learning
asks schools to work toward a “Shared Understanding of High-Quality Learning” using the ACE Learning Principles as a catalyst
utilizes a transformational continuum to help schools think about effective change processes in their school
helps schools identify drivers of change and barriers to change utilizing the 4 Cs (Conceptual Understanding, Commitment, Capacity, Competence)
While documentation (curriculum, policies, plans, procedures) is needed on a foundational level, the ACE Learning protocol prioritizes observation of learning and teaching over voluminous documentation that may or may not reflect what actually happens in practice. With ACE, the learning community’s energy is concentrated on defining, understanding, reflecting on, and embedding learning as its central purpose and goal. ACE invites all schools to reflect on how learning should illuminate the path to a better world for the next generation. (Pathways to Accreditation: International Education).
To prepare for the visit, the visitors have received the following reports from WIS:
Looking at the Learning Principles:
LP 3: Evidence of Learning
LP 5: Learner Engagement and Autonomy
LP 9: Learning Space and Time
The Foundation Standards Report
Reviewing the Foundation Standards:
FS 1: Learning Structure
FS 2: Organizational Structure
FS 3: Health, Safety and Security
FS 4: Finance, Facilities and Resources
FS 5: Ethical Practice
WIS welcomes Dr. Kotarski, Mr. Tago and Mrs. Simelane to our beautiful campus and community and wishes them a pleasant and rewarding stay in Namibia and in our school.
Maggie Reiff
High School Principal and Career Guidance Counsellor
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