‘Readiness’, Talent Management and Adaptive Solutions to enable Teachers in Indigenous Schools to Improve their Teaching

Abstract

This paper provides an insight into an explorative school-improvement program, known as the Indigenous Schools ‘readiness’ Program (ISRP) which sought to deal with educational challenges in a novel, yet evidenceinformed manner. Specifically, the program sought to engage a school’s teaching staff, what is referred to as the Talent in the program, to deal with localised Indigenous school challenges by having them conceptualise and deliver their improvement plans through three inter-related elements: ‘readiness’, Talent and Adaptive Solutions. The paper suggests that despite the best intentions of parties involved, establishing and maintaining such a program, at least to the point of being able to properly implement and evaluate it, requires that the schooling context, i.e., the community in which it serves, has first created the required community conditions. In effect, engaged its own adaptive solution to inherent challenges.