Boston College | Roche Center for Catholic Education

Emmaus Retreat | Thursday, July 11, 2013

UNDERSTANDING EDUCATIONAL TRANSFORMATI

ON

…or at least trying to.

“Why should anyone be led by you?”

Robert Goffee & Gareth Jones, Harvard Business Review

“Change is the norm.”

Technical Changevs.

Adaptive Change

Technical change

Addresses the symptoms of a problem. Change is incremental, gradual, non-

disruptive. The solution is largely known; work involves

realizing that solution. Change occurs in routine behaviors and

preferences. Status quo remains unchallenged, maybe

even strengthened. Can be solved by an authority or expert.

Examples of technical changes

Take medication to lower your blood pressure.

Increase the penalty for drunk driving.

Enforce your discipline policy more effectively.

Ask English teachers to improve writing instruction at your school.

Adaptive change

Challenges the status quo. Involves changing beliefs and values (i.e.,

culture). Addressing the matter requires new learning. Finding a solution demands collaboration;

people with the problem solve the problem. Solutions not readily apparent; need to be

identified over time. The problem is systemic, so the solution must

be systemic.

Examples of adaptive change

Change lifestyle to eat healthy, get more exercise, and lower stress

Raise public awareness of the dangers and effects of drunk driving, targeting teenagers in particular. Make everyone part of the solution.

Create a school environment that respects students and engages them in their learning.

Teaching writing across the curriculum: collectively set objectives, design lessons, and create rubrics.

Talk with people at your table about technical and adaptive changes that you have experienced as part of being a Catholic school leader. What were their key features? How did people react to them? Which proved more difficult? What role did you play? How did things turn out?

Using the “complex adaptive system”

(CAS) model to address issues of adaptive change

“All models are wrong. . . but some are useful.” George E. P. Box, "Science and statistics", Journal of the American Statistical Association 71:791-799

Put simply. . .

Home of the Complex Adaptive System

What is a complex adaptive system?

A population of diverse agents, all of which are. . .

Connected with behaviors and actions that are. . .

Interdependent and that exhibit. . . Learning (or adaptation) as they interact,

and. . . You can’t predict what a complex system will

do, but the patterns are revealing. It’s not complicated; it’s complex. It’s all a system.

  Very much so (4)

Considerably

(3)

Somewhat (2)

Little/None at all (1)

Can’t assess

(no rating)

Attention to initial conditions? Did people plan for reform before enacting change? Did people anticipate challenges? Were people able to draw on existing strengths?

         

Dissonance/Disequilibrium: Was a context created which disrupted normal routines? Were new opportunities created? Was the system prevented from reverting back to the status quo? Were people no longer doing what they had always done?

         

Was control effectively distributed? Did people have power to act in response to the disequilibrium they experienced? Were opportunities created that allowed people working in similar areas to engage with their collective work in-depth? Did people maintain and generate relevant connections beyond their immediate network? Were there both strong and weak ties?

         

Culture: Did key people in this endeavor share similar values about important aspects of their collective work? Were there mechanisms or opportunities aimed at promoting shared values?

         

Were interventions into the system evident at multiple levels of the system?          

Fractals: Did multiple aspects of the system draw on comparable strategies because they had proven effective?

         

Systematic feedback: Was there an ongoing and relevant data stream regularly generated and received by involved persons? Did participants have a sense for what impact their efforts were having?

         

Were key factors related to change balanced (e.g., authority & autonomy, challenge & support, top-down & bottom up)?

         

Synergy: Were key factors mutually reinforcing? Were there unexpected outcomes? Were there non-linear outcomes (minimal effort big effect)?

         

Objectives To develop a ‘complex adaptive system’

model for understanding effective adaptive change—exploring what key features of such models look like in theory & practice.

To use this model to assess specific aspects of “educational change” with which you are familiar.

To gain a sense for how you might apply a CAS model to efforts at transformation in your school.

Some Key Features of Complex

Adaptive Systems

(1) Initial Conditions

How much did people plan for reform before enacting change? Were they strategic?

Did people anticipate challenges? Were people able to draw on existing

strengths? Was there a plan? Was it logical?

Initial ConditionsThe Coalition of Essential Schools (CES)

“Where you start with school reform often has a big impact on where you

end up.”

Path dependence

A School-within-a-school strategy

5 “charter member” of the Coalition of Essential Schools embraced a school-within-a-school structure

Promoted divisiveness; charges of favoritism

3 years later, only one school remained a member of the Coalition

“Who came in and said there was something wrong with Silas Ridge High's curriculum? . . . [I]t is a sequential curriculum: American, English, and World literature—sophomore, junior, and senior years. . . . [W]ho said . . . the sophomore English curriculum was better with a topic-based curriculum? . . . [A] couple teachers sat down and wrote that curriculum over the summer, Coalition teachers. . . .We were changing what I thought was good about Silas Ridge High School—a strong academic curriculum, high standards, kids getting into the top colleges in the country. What was wrong? That was what really bothered me. And then it simply affected every teacher in the school when it took all levels of classes and changed the curriculum. It made us two different schools.” Silas Ridge HS English teacher

Assess your example of successful/unsuccessful reform in terms of the

degree to which it attended to the issue of initial conditions.

(2) Was a sense of disequilibrium or dissonance generated?

Was a context created which disrupted normal routines?

Were new opportunities created? Was the system prevented from

reverting to the status quo? Were people no longer doing what

they had always done?

Adaptive leadership

“Exercising leadership from a position of authority in adaptive situations means going against the grain. Rather than fulfilling the expectation for answers, one provides questions; rather than protecting people from outside threat, one lets people feel the threat in order to stimulate adaptation . . . rather than quelling conflict, one generates it; instead of maintaining norms, one challenges them.” (p. 126) Ronald Heifetz, (1994). Leadership without easy answers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

National Standards & Benchmarks

Benchmark 7.1: The curriculum adheres to appropriate, delineated standards, and is vertically aligned to ensure that every student successfully completes a rigorous and coherent sequence of academic courses based on the standards and rooted in Catholic values.

Anyone getting nervous?Sense of urgency?

Feeling excited?

Assess your example of successful/unsuccessful reform in terms of the

degree to which it generated a sense of

disequilibrium.

(3) Distributing Control: Generating New Networks

Was control effectively distributed? Did people have power to act in response

to disequilibrium they experienced? Were opportunities created that allowed

people working in similar areas to engage with their collective work in-depth?

Did people maintain or generate relevant connections beyond their immediate network?

Were there both strong and weak ties?

“[T]he extent to which organizations are able to innovate depends in part on the social links with the organizational units, as well as the links outside the organization.” (p. 97)

“Innovation emerges between rather than within people.” (p. 98) Moolenar, N.M. & Sleegers, J.C. Social networks, trust, and innovation: The role of relationships in supporting an innovative climate in Dutch schools.

Trust = Sincerity, Competence & Reliability (Bryk & Schnieder, Trust in Schools)

Strong & weak ties, innovation, & trust

Network formation

“School leaders . . . can influence tie formation though the creation of opportunities for teachers to interact in regular and long-lasting ways.” Coburn, C.E., Choi, L. and Mata, W. (2010). Network formation in the context of a district-based mathematics reform.

A leadership truism

Standard 6.4: “The leader/leadership team establishes and supports networks of collaboration at all levels within the school community to advance excellence.”

Standard 7.7: “Faculty collaborate in professional learning communities to develop, implement and continuously improve the effectiveness of the curriculum and instruction to result in high levels of student achievement.”

Standard 8.5: “Faculty collaborate in professional learning communities to monitor individual and class-wide student learning through methods such as common assessments and rubrics.”

How often do administrators and/or teachers at your school work collectively and intensively in group contexts on school-related matters (e.g., designing interim assessments, analyzing data, conducting classroom observations). a) It is a normal and explicit part of school routines. 3/20%b) We don’t necessarily set aside time for collective undertakings but opportunities do arise for this to occur. 8/53%c) People work in groups at my school but it is mainly on the basis of happenstance. 3/20%d) We seldom work collectively on aspects of our practice. 1/7%e) We never work collectively on aspects of our practice. 0/0%

A Centralized Network

A Distributed Network

A Decentralized Network

A Comparative View of Networks

What networks do you have at your school that offer opportunities for faculty and administrators to promote mutual trust by creating opportunities for them to experience one another’s sincerity, competence, and reliability?

What specifically do they do that promotes these outcomes? What risks do people take?

How do you know that trust is the ultimate outcome? What does the trust engendered by these experiences look like?

Thinking about your example of effective or ineffective

educational change, can you think of ways in which some

form of a network might have supported this reform work?

Assess your example of successful/unsuccessful

reform in terms of networks.

(4) Culture: Values & Beliefs

Did key people in this endeavor share similar values about important aspects of their collective work? Did they believe all students can learn? Did they consider it their responsibility to ensure that

this occurred? Did they appreciate the power of working collectively to

make this happen? Were there mechanisms/opportunities aimed

at promoting shared values?

To what degree do faculty and administrators share common values and beliefs regarding important aspects of your educational practices and policies (e.g., all students should be held to rigorous standards).a) Faculty and administrators share largely the same beliefs about the critical features of effective teaching and learning. (3/21%)b) Most faculty and administrators share comparable views about the critical features of effective teaching and learning. (8/57%)c) At my school, faculty and administrators are about evenly divided regarding the critical features of effective teaching and learning. (2 14%)d) Faculty and administrators are my school differ notably with regards to the critical features of effective teaching and learning. (1/7%) e) There is virtually no consensus among faculty and administrators at my school regarding the critical features of effective teaching and learning. (0/0)

Sr. Helen Prejean (via Aaron Brenner)

“We watch what we do to see what

we believe.”

National Standards & Benchmarks Standard 1: “An excellent Catholic school is guided and driven by a clearly communicated mission that embraces a Catholic Identity rooted in Gospel values, centered on the Eucharist, and committed to faith formation, academic excellence and service.”

Standard 2: “An excellent Catholic school adhering to mission provides a rigorous academic program for religious studies and catechesis in the Catholic faith, set within a total academic curriculum that integrates faith, culture, and life.”

Culture & disequilibrium

“Life for everyone in a school is determined by ideas and values, and if these are not under constant discussion and surveillance, the comforts of ritual replace the conflict and excitement involved in growing and changing. . . . If the principal is not constantly confronting one’s self and others, and if others cannot confront the principal with the world of competing ideas and values shaping life in a school, he or she is an educational administrator and not an educational leader.” Seymour Sarason, The Culture of the School and the Problem of Change (1971)

If a visitor walked into your school, what would your “culture” look like?

What would they see? What values would be

evident?

Assess your example of successful/unsuccessfu

l reform in terms of shared cultural values.

BREAK TIME!

(5) Were multiple levels of the “system” impacted? Were interventions into the

system evident at multiple levels of the system? Did this effort impact students, teachers,

administrators, parents? Were changes evident in classrooms,

meetings, and extracurricular contexts? Did the reform permeate varied aspects of

the school “system?”

Multiple levels (cont.)

“[C]hange in education, at whatever level, is not so much a consequence of effecting change in one particular factor or variable. . . . It is more a case of generating momentum in a new direction by attention to as many factors as possible.” Mark Mason,

Complexity Theory and the Philosophy of Education

Multiple levels (still cont.)

“If one wants to ensure a consistent range of quality in a complex system . . . it is best not to isolate only one factor of the system for improvement. . . . The more levels of the system that the policy affects, the more likely it is that the policy will have a sustained effect.” M. J. Buell & D. J. Cassidy, The Complex and Dynamic Nature of Quality in Early Care and Educational

Programs

A Lynch Leadership Academy example: DREAM BIG Determination, Respect, Excellence,

Accountability, & Mastery (DREAM)

Belief in God (BIG)

“[This policy] has created a common discipline policy. It has set high expectations across the board for our faculty. Out of this has come a parent accountability contract. I have decreased tardiness. . . . All of this is coming out of [my LGP].” Catholic school principal, Cohort 1

Can you think of an example of school

reform that attended to multiple levels of the system? Was it

successful?

Assess your example of

successful/unsuccessful reform in terms of

cultural values.

(6) Fractals

Do multiple aspects of the system draw on comparable strategies because they are effective?

Are effective strategies reproduced throughout the system?

Fractals in nature: Branching patterns

Reflection: Critical to school transformationHow often does your school create opportunities, to stop and reflect, in some collective forum, on the work you are doing as faculty and/or administrators at your school? (This may be grade-level, departmental, or administrative groups.)a) It is a normal and explicit part of our school routines. (3/21%)b) We don’t necessarily set aside time for reflection on a regular basis but we do create opportunities for reflection to occur. (7/50%)c) Reflection occurs at my school but it is mainly on the basis of happenstance. (2/14%) d) Collectively, we seldom reflect on aspects of our practice. (2/14%)e) Collectively, we never reflect on aspects of our practice. (0/0%)

What general strategies have you experienced that

seem to be effective in efforts at school

transformation?

Assess your example of successful/unsuccessful reform

in terms of the degree to which it drew on comparable

strategies integrated throughout the reform.

(7) Are system elements balanced?

The Goldilocks principle: “Not too much, not too little.” Authority/Autonomy Top-down/Bottom up Challenge/Support

Thinking about reforms you are familiar with, did any aspects seem to be out of

balance?

Assess your example of

successful/unsuccessful reform in terms of the degree to which the

effort overall seemed to be in balance.

(8) Systematic Feedback

Was there an ongoing and relevant data stream regularly generated that was received by involved persons?

Did participants have a sense for what impact their efforts were having?

Benchmark 6.5: “The leader/leadership team directs the development and continuous improvement of curriculum and instruction, and utilizes school-wide data to plan for continued and sustained academic excellence and growth.”

Benchmark 8: “An excellent Catholic school uses school-wide assessment methods and practices to document student learning and program effectiveness, to make student performances transparent, and to inform the continuous review of curriculum and improvement of instructional practices.”

Why do you need a data stream?

With any enduring system, change is the norm; so you need to react to emerging developments.

Data can be a means to ‘perturb’ the system.

The curriculum adheres to appropriate, delineated standards and is vertically aligned to ensure that every student successfully completes a rigorous and coherent sequence of academic courses based on the standards and rooted in Catholic values.

Graded course of study Standardized test scores National standards Curriculum maps Specific notation of Catholic values in the curriculum Course sequence Common assessments

Written curriculum

In your experience in the field of education, what

data have you found to be compelling?

Assess your example of successful/unsuccessful reform in terms of its effective use of data.

(9) Synergy

Were key factors mutually reinforcing?

When one system element did what it was supposed to do, did it enhance what other system elements did?

Were there non-linear outcomes (Minimal effort Big effect)?

Was the sum of the whole greater than the sum of the individual parts?

Were there unexpected outcomes?

As a school leader, when were you pleasantly

surprised? What factors do you think contributed to

this development? Why did this occur? What factors

may have come into play?

Assess your example of successful/unsuccessful reform in terms of the outcomes it generated that surprised you.

The Final Step 1) Add up your totals for the categories you

assessed. (You may not have found every dimension relevant.)

2) Divide that total by the number of categories you assessed.

3) If you were looking at an effective reform, was your average greater than 2?

4) If you were looking at an ineffective reform, was you average less than 2?

“All models are wrong. . . but some

are useful.”

Was this model useful? What questions remain?